Waking the Dead
by Atolm2000
Summary: A bit more detail on Gonou's time at the temple with Sanzo before he became Hakkai, from Sanzo's POV; companion to "Here Lies Gonou". Chapter 9 - Of course things couldn't stay peaceful; you know things are tangled when Sanzo's pushed into plotting.
1. Foggy Shades of Grey

I don't own Saiyuki etc etc etc and I'm broke anyway. Suing me would be like suing Faye Valentine - there's no assets, only debts.

Rating is for violence, self-inflicted injury, angst, enough cynicism to peel the paint of a car at twenty paces, and Gojyo swearing for three lines straight.

I had originally -INTENDED- for this to start around the same point Isil Elen's "Here Lies Gonou" did…then Sanzo decided to start at an earlier point in time. So I figured I'd at least make the first chapter break around the same event. Then, when that hit 14 pages, I realized that not only was I adding a good day almost onto the time covered, but that there were long periods where Gonou was unconscious/incoherent/not really saying much, while Sanzo was rather occupied, nevermind Gojyo being Gojyo in all of his Gojyo-ness and taking unfair advantage of the period when Sanzo did not have a gun to shoot him with. I hope he knows how lucky he is to've lived through that first chapter.

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Cho Gonou had one accomplishment right before he was no longer Cho Gonou that nobody ever heard about.

Cho Gonou brought one stupid monk back from the dead.

I had died maybe a week before I found Goku. Everything I'd tried to do had turned to ash; everyone I'd tried to help had suffered, most had died. When I stood between those stone bars, the morning sun rising to my right, the light drowning out my bleeding hands, the ragged state of my robes, that I was leaning on the rock so as not to fall over, and Goku looked up almost in disbelief that I was there - I felt like I had walked into a divine joke. My reflection in those big gold eyes was everything I should've been, a reminder of what I could never live up to. "Stop calling me. It's getting annoying, and you're driving me nuts." _I'm not a savior, I'm not a saint. Don't rely on me, I can't be what you want._

When I climbed the mountain, it was because I had made a promise to Koumyou not to walk away when someone called for my help, whether they knew they were calling or not. He made it a very serious thing, and didn't put illusions to it - he'd told me it would hurt sometimes, to never turn away. I climbed the mountain intending for that to be the last thing I ever did; I would find out what I needed to do, and when it was done, it'd be over. After all, everything else I'd touched had died, so it couldn't last that long, right?

Ha. Ha. Ha.

So for a long time, I limped on; a Sanzo is supposed to be strength for others, and I had responsibilities that wouldn't go away thanks to a certain talking thistleburr, so I walled everything back to die in the dark; when I came across something I needed to help with, I did what was necessary and walked away. I even started spending time in the temples again, not because I have any fondness for them, but because it was responsibilities I could attend to, nipping at the heels of the priesthood to punch holes in their hypocrisy now and then, walking dead without feeling anything.

I intensified my long tradition of not listening much to the other things I Heard anymore; sealed up my own empathy, that sense of overhearing emotions, intentions, who someone really was, save for knowing when someone was a threat, being able to predict ambushes, and being able to tell when a stupid hannyou was lying to me.

"No, haven't seen him. Why're you asking?"

I caught that startled pause behind guileless red eyes and the mental 'eep' just past a calm, unwavering voice. He's a good liar, it's just too bad I'm paying attention to the parts one usually doesn't need to train for deception.

"He's wanted for the murder of two clans of youkai." That was a warning; a nudge of how serious this was, to tell me the truth.

"Really? Hunh." He's leaning slightly against the door, closer than I'd like to stand but he's not moving because he's trying to block me from the door without making it look like he's blocking the door, smoking nonchalantly; although there was a glimmer of surprise at my words, it's not as much as I would've expected. "So what do you want with him?"

"I'm here to bring him back to the Temple of the Setting Sun for trial." No flicker of shifting intention; he's blocking the door, and knows what - who - he's keeping me away from. "Whatever you're hiding, it won't do any good." He doesn't even seem to care about the needling; I don't register as a real immediate threat yet.

The door cracks, behind him, and I catch green eyes over his shoulder, dark hair, a startled blink, and an aura louder than normal gradually blending out of a jangling, mismatched state; youkai but doesn't look like it, but it's not hard for me to recognize the ear-cuffs as limiters, even without the strange aura.

So it really did work, to become youkai by killing a thousand.

Gojyo's hands go to the doorframe as a visible panic hits and he snaps, "Get back ins-", just as my knee hits him in the stomach, knocking the wind out of him. Before I can get by him, almost before he's caught his breath, he's standing in my way again with a fierce snarl; now he's angry.

I take a swing, hoping to get him out of the way before he's recovered; he blocks, some surprised wobble but he holds now that he's realizing he's in for a fight.

He ends up looking down the barrel of my revolver, a warning shot going off past his head aimed upward; I'm not going to drag this out any more than I have to. "Get out of my way or I'll kill you." If I'd really wanted him dead, I wouldn't have warned him, but it still wasn't an idle threat; I knew just enough to know that this wasn't a situation I could take lightly. Gonou's still holding the door partway open, a tinge of fear for Gojyo's sake and a stifled, "Gojyo!", and it starts to occur to me that there's something else to this.

Gojyo's eyes narrow, and I've just gotten the "threat - serious threat" tag that was missing earlier - then there's movement, he's actually ducked and twisted my wrist with one hand, the gun goes off hitting the doorframe as I'm forced to drop it; he's faster than I'd expected, outweighs me half again, and is no stranger to a fight. That registers as he shoulders past me, knocking me off balance, pulling my wrist with him so that it's bent behind my back, and I end up eating dirt with his knee buried in the small of my back, one hand holding my wrist behind my back, the other around the base of my neck holding me down. He doesn't like me; really doesn't like me, there's disgust and contempt, I can almost hear the words 'hypocrite' or 'liar' attached to my robes. Feh, he should see the ones that aren't open about their faults.

"Go, get out of here!" - he's going to hold me down so Gonou can escape, and Gonou was hesitating in the door, unsure how to react. Gonou runs, but doesn't get ten feet before there's a familiar blur from the woods tackling him; he actually manages to kick Goku off as they fall.

Goku lands on his feet, skidding back with that reckless feral grin. "Hey, you are strong!" Of course he's strong you idiot, he killed that many youkai, doesn't it register that "he's strong" means "you could get hurt or dead"? It doesn't bother me that he's helping, but that damn careless attitude...

And Gonou picks himself up out of the dirt, with a shift of something in his aura and his eyes as he's cornered; it's something cold-blooded, deadly, a suspension of remorse, something I've seen the kid brother of surfacing in my own mind a few times - I wouldn't toy with mine, and this is off by a couple powers of ten.

And my pistol's barely a foot from his hand.

I start struggling, snarling, trying to throw Gojyo off; he digs his fingers into the back of my neck, putting more weight there to pin me, and when that doesn't stop me, he moves my wrist up half an inch, enough that if I move, it'll either hurt like Hell or start tearing part of my elbow.

Not like I'm paying attention to the "hurt like Hell" part.

Goku dives, I can see the flicker as Gonou notices my pistol and snatches it, I wince and freeze, going mostly limp as Goku realizes what's going on too late and practically runs face first into it, I'm not looking but waiting for the gunshot that'll be the end of the one thing that's truly forced me to live for years now -

And there's no gunshot; I'm left with a flicker of a pulse back behind all those walls, a brief pang that maybe everything under my routines isn't as dead as I'd thought, and there might be something alive enough to care in me yet; a realization that I was afraid for him.

Goku's still standing frozen, staring down my revolver stuck in the moment of dawning recognition. Gonou's looking up, breathing hard - pain? - I can see him reining in the beast, dragging it back, trying to hold his aim steady as his shoulders shake.

"Please..I have...one thing I need to do...just let me finish this one thing, and I'll come back and turn myself in, I'll accept whatever punishment awaits." He's speaking haltingly through pain, but the words are bleeding out of him; he's not lying, he's throwing everything on our mercy.

He staggers to his feet, not moving his aim off Goku; backs into the woods, then turns and breaks into a stumbling run.

Goku blinks, almost relaxes, then snaps around to face Gojyo; Gojyo's relaxed his grip on my neck and wrist, and is...watching my face with a sense of total confusion, trying to make sense of something that doesn't match what he'd seen previously, the hostile intent's gone behind the new puzzle.

He waits until Gonou's footsteps can't be heard to cautiously let go of my wrist and neck and stand up, warily; the active hostility might be gone, but he's still aware that I'm a possible danger. I sit up, dusting off the front of my robes as if it'd brush off whatever he saw in me. Goku's attention is focused on him behind me.

I could do the cautious, strict to orders thing; leave Gojyo to Goku to deal with, stop Gonou and just take him back to the Temple and get this over with. Even if it came to a fight, he's wounded, I should be able to manage. I could stick to the base responsibility I was given, leave no openings for him to escape, strangle that flicker of a pulse and make sure I never felt anything again.

Instead, I stood up, turned to Gojyo,and demanded, "What's going on here?"

"That's funny, I was about to ask you the same thing."

"How much do you know?"

"Not a whole lot, apparently." He's pulled out another cigarette and is lighting it to replace the one that got lost in the fight. "Don't think we wanna talk about it out here in the middle of the street, though." He walks back to his door, pushing it open, and half-mockingly motions to usher me in.

A few minutes later, I'm sitting at a small, cluttered table in the front room of a cramped apartment, leaning on folded hands; there's an almost overflowing ashtray in the middle, a lot of empty bottles and cans, and Goku's attacking a bowl of apples Gojyo gave him open season on. Gojyo's barely fighting off a nervous pace.

"So what are you, the temple's hired assassin or something?"

Bloody Hell, I just had this argument with the damned temple before I came out here, and the only reason I was even out here, was that they'd managed to convince me that wasn't the kind of work I was doing. Sort-of. Gah, this is why I'd taken off into the wilderness that first time... There is no amount of profanity that could accurately convey my response to his question, so I settled on the kind of glare that caused temple acolytes to wither where they stood.

His cigarette shifts in his mouth, he raises an eyebrow that disappears into bright red bangs in speechless silence, and I think his entire mental description of me in that moment collapsed down to 'What the fuck?' "Oookay, maybe not."

"How much do you know about him?" I was quite pointedly not acknowledging the existence of his question.

"Shouldn't I get to ask first since I'm the host?" I brush off his annoyance with another sharp look. "Alright, alright." He leans on the doorframe, looking down distantly, counting off. "His name's Cho Gonou. I found him bleeding to death in the rain not too long ago. Brought him in, fixed him up, got a doctor in, made sure he'd survive. He's quiet, polite, doesn't talk much, and didn't expect to live; he never offered any explanation, and I never asked. He has nightmares, bad ones, gets kinda morbid occasionally, and there's a name he keeps mumbling in his sleep. That's about it." Gojyo's not entirely trusting, I got that from how he dealt with me and the sense that he's still not saying everything, yet he had no problem taking in a stranger without any explanation; there's something there I'm not going to guess at except to realize I can't predict his actions. "You?"

"I was sent to retrieve him, because he killed at least one thousand youkai, from Hyakugan Maoh's clan and the Dark Crow; decimated both of them. I was given a description, and that was about it; I was not told anything more. That he had the potential to be dangerous was a foregone conclusion."

"And you brought the kid with you for something like that?" He raises an eyebrow at me over his cigarette. Goku looks over with a piece of fruit in his mouth half-forgotten, realizing he's become the topic.

"Goku can take care of himself, and he would have terrorized the other monks if I'd left him there alone. Besides, he insisted."

"If I were going just by what you knew, I'd call that pretty irresponsible of you. But then, what would I know, eh?" He's acting like he's blowing it off, but he's definitely fishing; trying to get a reaction.

"I'm supposed to care?"

My reputation here just clicked another step back towards "son of a bitch", but he's still holding off on that for something. "So what're you going to do now?"

"Do you have any clues where he's going?"

"Nope." Half-truth; nothing specific but it seems he's got a few clues.

"You honestly have no clue where he's going?"

"None at all." Gojyo's stubborn.

The direction he'd fled...there's only really one thing that way that I know of that'd be relevant. "I think I know." I stand up. "Goku? We're going." He looks up, nods, and runs outside ahead of me, the door falling back shut behind him.

"What're you going to do when you catch up to him?" Gojyo shifts in the doorframe, so that he could easily block my way out if he wants.

"I'm not sure yet; it'll depend on what he does."

"If you take him back - what's the temple going to do?"

"That's not my issue; they're Buddhists, so I doubt they'll call for an execution, but it won't be taken lightly."

"And if he decides not to surrender?" He's gone serious, quiet.

"He's killed before; he's a fool if he thinks he could make that choice without setting himself up for conflict. If it's not us, it'll probably be someone striking for revenge; he won't get away from this cleanly." I wait a moment for that to sink in, gauging his reaction; he doesn't particularly seem to care, he's gotten involved and obviously isn't walking away. "You can't protect him forever."

Things border on a staredown; he's half-blocking my path, seriously considering his chances if he tries to stop me. He straightens a bit closer to his full height so he's looking down at me - he's half again my size. He's resolutely refusing to be intimidated, too annoyed to let me win, and I'm too used to being outnumbered and outweighed to be bothered. Some of his attention is on the door; doubtless wary of Goku intervening.

"Guess I'll just have to tag along then." He grabs a polearm that's by the door by a simple strap-harness, slinging it over his left shoulder, then turns to open the door and let me out; but when I reach the door, he stops me with his hand on the door handle.

"You know, the kid could've gotten killed back there."

I stare at the door, hissing through my teeth slightly. "He was being careless; it would've been his own damn fault." It's not like I hadn't realized that, and if he had...

"It's funny; you say you don't care, but the way you were acting a minute ago, I would've sworn you were the one staring down a gunbarrel."

"That wouldn't be my problem; I meant what I said." I look up with a harsh glare, warning him off. If the gun had gone off, it would've killed both of us; Goku is the one thing I've been forcing myself to live for that isn't looking more and more like a hopeless wild goose chase with each passing year, and I'm not going to deal with this topic any further.

The latch clicks and he pushes it open. He seems determined to tread on every nerve of mine he can.

Goku keeps running a bit ahead, then coming back to where I'm walking; Gojyo hangs about fifteen feet back. I can feel that he's watching me, gauging me, trying to figure out what to expect, how much I'm hiding - what's under the stoneface.

If anyone had asked at the time, I'd have said he found nothing he could puzzle out because there wasn't really anything to find; masks left running on long after the face under it had died and rotted away, a position that wasn't a person anymore.

For a moment, Goku gets far enough ahead that I almost lose sight of him, and I remember that Gonou still has my gun and came within an inch of shooting him before. "Hey, idiot, don't get that far ahead!", I snap, calling him back.

Goku stops to wait for us to catch up, then starts pacing me, walking right next to me with a whiff of annoyance. "So...what's with him? He seems like an okay guy." He's trying to keep his voice down, a slight tilt of his head Gojyo's direction; Gojyo can probably hear him anyway.

"He's still a threat; you don't need to be evil to be dangerous." I'm trying to keep my voice down anyway; my back is to him, and the gaze on my back just twitched, so he must've heard enough to tell something of what I said.

"Sanzo...what's going on here?"

I can't give him clarity. "A mess; that's all you need to know." I can't tell him who the bad guy is; I'd stayed silent when I was first told he'd killed Hyakugan Maoh's clan, because I didn't think "That's a problem?" or "Good for him" would go over very well, and there's something we haven't been told yet about why..._"and there's a name he keeps mumbling in his sleep"_...that could mean a lot with that clan, and I'm getting the feeling if I knew the details, I might end up siding with Gonou. I haven't gotten any indication from Gojyo that he'd act on malice; there's been nothing more sinister here on Gojyo's part than a stubborn protectiveness. The more I can figure out about this job, the more I think I'm standing by the law not because of justice, but because of the magnitude of Gonou's actions; maybe just because he's probably better off with the temple's punishment than with the vengeance of Hyakugan Maoh's allies or any potential survivors. We've walked into a big, foggy grey area, where there isn't really a definable "Justice", only a lot of wreckage to untangle.

"Y'know, you're about the unholiest monk I've ever seen; were you a mob enforcer in another life?" I'd kill Gojyo, but that'd be giving him the reaction he wants. "Come to think of it, how do I even know you're really a priest?"

"If I were lying about being a priest, I'd actually be trying to live up to people's stupid unrealistic expectations." When I look over my shoulder, he's smoking; it seemed like he'd walk to his death with a cigarette in his mouth. It irked me with a twinge of a craving made worse by raw nerves, but I wasn't going to fumble with it in a situation like this.

"Or you might be a bad liar. Not real rare, for hitmen to be lousy liars." Great, now he thinks I'm with the mob.

"Sanzo's a priest, and an important one, really! Sometimes all he has to do to get the others to shut up and listen is look at them, and I haven't really seen anyone that outranks him, he lives at the temple most of the time except when he gets too annoyed at them 'cuz they won't let him drink or smoke or eat meat and they get really upset when he scares the acol-" I cuff him upside the head while he's walking sideways to yammer at Gojyo, sending him stumbling briefly with a sharp "Shut up!"

"What, it's the truth, you say yourself that you really don't get along with-" He doesn't quite manage to duck although he tries, although now that he's expecting it, it doesn't bother his balance.

He mutters and glares at me indignantly, and I glare right back, but honestly, the mumbling outrage is easier for me to take than the times he gives me that look of absolute faith and trust. That continues for a few minutes as we walk in silence.

"I still say you act more like a hitman than a monk."

I whip around, threatening him with the pistol half-reflexively. "Now listen, if you want to die that-" And the cold snarl dies a quick death as I realize I'm sighting down empty air; Gonou still has my gun. Gojyo raises an eyebrow with an odd, cold twitch at the corner of his mouth; if the situation were a little less serious, he'd probably be laughing at me right about now.

Anything else I say will only damage my dignity further, so I turn back to continue walking with a huff; I can't believe I've already let him goad me into making a fool of myself.

After another ten minutes or so, I hear a click and rattle from the polearm's harness, and start paying a bit more attention to what he's focusing on and if there's the slightest flicker of hostile intent towards me. The blade's whistling through the air as he's toying with it; his attention is on me, distrusting and analyzing, but nothing actively violent - he's testing me. I tense at the snap and rustle as he takes off an overhanging tree limb with it, but don't look back; I can get enough off his aura to know if he turns threatening, and until then, I'm not going to give him a reaction. After a few more swings, I hear him put it back.

The further we get, the more unnerving the calculating gaze between my shoulder blades gets; I'd tune it out more, but I'm still not sure he won't try anything, and watching for any warning flicker of active hostility is more important at the moment than shrugging off the nerves, particularly when he's periodically toying with his weapon behind me. If he decides to try anything, he could kill me, and I'll likely only get a second of real intent of violence off his aura in warning.

Goku finding signs of blood rubbed off on one of the trees, still damp, is only a momentary distraction; none of us were hurt, it has to be his, there must be some preexisting injury, which would make sense with how he acted earlier. It seems like he's trying to ignore it, and if he's bleeding enough to lead a trail, there's a chance he might not get to where he's going…

I try to pick up the pace after that, but quickly get reminded of the eyes on my back, the weighing sense redoubled for some reason. It's like he's trying to read every move I make, and even the paranoid jabs would be preferable after a while to the silent, appraising stare.

I ignore it as long as I can, until it finally gets to me. "Look, if you're going to insist on tagging along, you may as well do it where I can see you."

Something amused crosses his face. "Whatever you say."

The walk continues in silence, him walking beside me now; the only real change is that now we're both watching each other out of the corner of our eyes, while trying not to look like we're watching each other. It's a good thing Goku's good at tracking, I don't think I'd be able to find shit and still deal with Gojyo.

A long period of quiet ended when Goku froze. "Did you hear that?"

Of course I didn't hear whatever he just heard; he could hear a pin drop from two city blocks away, and even though I've stopped to listen, I can't catch anything more than wind in the leaves. "What was it?"

"It sounded like -" He tenses suddenly. "I smell blood!", and he's off, sprinting full-tilt into the woods with Gojyo and I struggling to catch up.

I can just catch a quiet murmur of Gonou's voice, another aura cold and hurt and hostile, before he's drowned out by Goku shouting ahead somewhere -

"STOP IT! Damnit, what the Hell do you think you're doing?!"

I come to a stop around a corner in the path; Goku's just tackled Gonou, who's on the ground in a moment of stunned shock, the fingers on his right hand bloodied, blood streaming down his face from his right eye; at first it looks like it might be missing, but it's just been cut into and so red-drenched that it's hard to see. "You've got nice eyes, you should be trying to keep them, not get rid of them!" That confirms it; he was trying to take his own eye out. I bite back a sickened twinge; this is already a wreck, it'll only be harder to deal with if I start caring. Goku still doesn't seem to grasp the reasoning behind self-inflicted injury, he's confused enough by simple lack of caring, much less outright trying to hurt one's self; Gonou's trying to shrink from him, hands returning to normal. There's blood starting to show from his side, the injury from earlier; he's dropped my gun next to him.

And a sense of surprise briefly interrupting the blanket hate from the youkai I'd just almost run into; there's two more on either side of him, and they're between Gojyo and I, and Gonou.

Not that it takes them long to react to our presence; the one in the middle whips around to face me, and the other two - humans - sidestep to where they can watch us and Goku at the same time.

"What the Hell - is this kid yours?"

I give a curt nod, looking up at pale eyes; he's a good head taller than I am, dark figure, black-feathered mantle, and looks like he's probably at least not clueless in a fight. I hate fighting youkai unarmed.

"Listen, this is none of your business; we don't have any fight with you people. Just walk away."

There's a brief, weak, "You don't have to-" from Gonou that I ignore, completely.

"I can't do that; I don't want a fight with you, but this has already been made my business. You walk away or else." I've already committed myself to this one. This'd probably be the kind of fight where it wouldn't be a bad idea to invoke the Makai Tenjou, except that I'm barely two feet from him, and most youkai tend to recognize holy magic of a certain scale and that it's a good idea to interrupt the poor sot chanting before it has a real effect if they can, usually by inflicting a large degree of injury.

He glowers at me, then to Gojyo next to me, not really taking his eyes off me - "You, with the red hair - Taboo brat!" There's a sharp, angry intake of breath from Gojyo; the human on that side flinches. "Stay out of this!"

The human steps closer with a hand raised trying to motion for calm. "Aah - listen, Gojyo, this isn't what it looks like, and we could probably use your help here - give us a hand and I can explain every-"

"Just shut the fuck up already - I know plenty, and you shit-for-brains assholes can go fuck yourselves up the ass with a rusty poleaxe if you think I'm going to be your little fetch-bitch, and if you hog-reaming horsefuckers so much as lay a finger on Gonou I swear to the Gods I'll-"

"You may as well leave now, if you don't want a fight; neither of us are going to walk away." Not that I wasn't…impressed with Gojyo's creativity, but I didn't think they'd let him continue much further anyway.

The youkai takes a swing at me, already showing claws and shifting partway, feathers and partial-wings off the arms; I dodge back, but almost run into Gojyo, so that while it doesn't hit me, it does catch the front of my robes, enough to lift me off the ground. Before it can do anything else, Goku's kicked it from behind, knocking it stumbling so that it drops me; Gojyo's got the one that recognized him, the other one's trying to stop me as I dive for my pistol.

This is slightly delayed by Gonou, aiming very shakily at the youkai, clicking the trigger rapidly in confusion; it's not that hard to note that he doesn't seem to realize the hammer needs to be cocked for a revolver to fire. The youkai wheels around to pursue either me or Goku as Gonou drops it, getting to his feet to fight barehanded. Before he can go after the youkai, I've already retrieved my gun and fired. The youkai falls against a tree, a large hole in one shoulder that nearly took off the arm; Gojyo raps the polearm on the ground, the man he'd been fighting on the ground unconscious. The last one is frozen, realizing how close the shot that'd just hit the youkai had come to him, and that he's now got our full attention; he turns and bolts without a second thought.

I stand up, putting my gun away and dusting off my robes with a sharp look at the wounded youkai. "You have a chance to leave here alive; don't do anything stupid."

When I turn to help Gonou up, I end up catching a glimpse of him dashing into the woods after the one that bolted, the patchwork jars sticking out sharply. Before I can say or do anything, I see fast movement from Gojyo's polearm, directed off out of my vision - Goku's aura, impossible to mistake.

For a moment I hold the aim on the back of Gojyo's head; he's put the polearm's blade into the bushes, but not hit anything, Goku's griping at him and he's dropped the weapon, holding both hands up mumbling an apology. He turns around just as I'm putting the gun away, again, and there's a glimmer of recognition that he almost just got shot; Goku hops back into the clearing, asking where Gonou went to.

I start to turn back to look the direction he went, but of course the world's insane, so the idiots in it have to follow suit; I know there's trouble when I start hearing a broken, weak chuckle from the youkai, on the ground barely a foot behind Gojyo, and there's definitely violent intent but I don't think it's got a clue who to direct it at. I slide a tired glower over, to see it standing up behind Gojyo with his polearm in one claw, moving to either use him as a shield or kill him with his own weapon, I don't think it's even sure which at this point, it's snapped; I can just see its head over his shoulder, its other claw in the process of grabbing his arm, and while he's realized what's going on, he's in no position to move fast enough to get away from it.

A split second later, there's a gunshot that cuts close enough to Gojyo's head to leave a few strands of crimson red drifting away, and it falls dead, dropping the polearm; Gojyo blinks widely and nervously at me, and the gun in my hand, and the twitch I'm starting to develop.

"Does anyone else feel like doing anything stupid?" My snarl isn't directed at any particular conscious target, pistol aimed in the air; this entire night has been one long trend of the world trying to tread on every single nerve I have, and I'm getting sick of it. "I'd like to know before I bother putting this away again."

The breeze whistles through the leaves, with no other answer. I put the pistol away, and turn to Goku. "We're going to have to track him down. Again."

Gojyo lags behind Goku and I while he replaces his polearm in the harness, then easily keeps up with us. Goku takes up the trail through the woods, following it at a fast pace; between blood and broken branches, even I could've followed this. At one point Goku stops suddenly with an "Eeggh!", then stops in front of us, pointing to the side with a "He went this way!"; I don't know why he even bothers, since again even I could follow the trail without trouble, but I humor him just to get through this faster. It doesn't take long to catch up to him, limping ahead slowly.

I don't think he even realized Gojyo and I had almost caught up to him; we fall in on either side of him behind, matching pace. He doesn't pay attention to us, but any time we try to catch up to walk beside him, he starts pushing himself harder.

"We're going with you." No options given.

He glances back just long enough to see the Ultimate Glare Of I'm Already Pissed So Don't Push Your Luck, and continues on anyway.

"Who knows, we might be able to help.", Gojyo adds; his refusal of argument is more friendly sounding than mine, but no less adamant.

He's not arguing, but he doesn't stop trying to keep ahead of us; finally we just settle into following behind like jackals, staying just far enough behind that he doesn't struggle to outpace us again.


	2. Old Wounds

…Erm, yeah, I don't own them, angst, blood, violence, self-inflicted injury, bitchy Sanzo train of thought, I'm not sure I'm going to approach Gojyo's little rant again in this fic so language feels redundant, the usual.

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The sky is starting to turn the vague shade of pale-dark that comes just before sunrise by the time the forest thins out to a clearing. The air's thick with the smell of smoke; there's no towers or keep on the hilltop, only a pile of burned-out rubble and cooling ashes, smouldering down in silence. Gonou stumbles a few more steps towards it in a daze; I keep my eyes down, on the wreckage. In a few years, it'll be impossible to tell there was even anything here; all of Hyakugan Maoh's infamous rapacious arrogance reduced to nothing.

Gonou drops to his knees with a howl of pain and grief, and a hollow cry from the blurring-off aura that buffets into me despite my best efforts at focusing to not Hear it; raw sorrow prying another fleeting echo out of me, another ghost of a pulse. For a minute, it's all I can do to stand still and play statue, not betraying any reaction; I manage a flat, "I heard that this place burned down a few days ago. Nothing survived.", and that's about it.

Gonou's digging through the rubble frantically, heedless of his own injuries; fighting to find something in the ruin. I struggle the sense back down to just a presence, awareness that yes, there's a living aura in front of me and nothing more. Goku's standing halfway between me and the ruin, looking torn between wanting to help and not knowing where or how to start; he shoots me a pleading look, whether for answers, explanation, or aid I can't tell. "Sanzo?"

"Tch. Don't look at me." I almost snap the words, letting cynicism bury anything else that might creep in. There's nothing I can give; the ruin already happened, and I have no more idea how to answer Gonou's cries than Goku does. I can't fix what's been broken here, there's no help to give that'll change his loss.

The ashes are burning down, and I don't have enough left to bleed out if I let myself stop being detached, even while Gonou's frantically digging through the rubble until there's nothing left to do but batter at the larger debris hopelessly. Gojyo's walked out to him, laying a hand on his shoulder; he slumps, breathing hard, kneeling in the ruins that cover the better part of the hillside. "Oy, I know how you feel, but even if her body did survive….you could dig for a month and not get anywhere."

"I'm not leaving. Not until I've prepared her a grave or monument." His voice sounds hollow, drained out, broken.

One pronoun that had been missing from my attempt at finding out what was happening earlier that likely filled in a lot of blanks. The line of why Gonou was a criminal and Hyakugan Maoh, not, was drawn in lines where the temple and surrounding authorities became no less wolves than the Youkai lord or the organized crime groups he associated with; Hyakugan Maoh had gotten away with whatever he wanted because he was the authority in this area, and politics had given him a nice insulating web where no one had dared to speak up for fear of the complications and conflict that would follow, the old established pecking orders more important than the victims. Because of that, I was supposed to treat Cho Gonou as a criminal because nobody else had cared to act until things broke and went too far.

Gojyo's walked back in silence to stand in front of me grimly, Goku sitting cross-legged a few feet away.

"Shouldn't you be saying a prayer for the dead or something - for Kanan?" Red eyes trying to skewer me with what I'm supposed to be, an accusing glare.

"I only pray for the living." I meet the glare and return it; I haven't said a prayer for the dead in years now. Prayers for the dead are the emptiest form of apology on Earth when you were involved, a way to feel like you've done something useful without putting forth any effort if you weren't; one fool in robes chanting sutras changes nothing for someone who's already passed on. Prayers for the dead aren't for the dead, they're for the living left behind.

He turns away from me in disgust, taking a few steps away with his back to me, muttering something I can't catch besides edges of profanity barbed my direction; Gonou is weakly rearranging stones to build a caern, blood running over the pieces from scrapes and cuts on his hands as he stacks them awkwardly, the sky starting to tint red with dawn casting shadows.

The living left behind - is enough reason to relent. I carefully settle down into lotus position; Goku looks back from the ruins to me, blinking, having been around me long enough to know how rare this is. There's a break in Gojyo swearing under his breath as he glances back, then does a double-take.

The sutra returns to me easily; surprisingly easily - I haven't spoken it since…since the week before I'd found Goku; six years, thereabouts, but perhaps I should've expected it to never leave, it'd become such rote by the time I gave it up. For the first time in years, it feels like the words might have meaning again, something restored after having been said so many times to have started ringing hollow. It's the sutra intended to be read for the dead, but they won't need it; the ones here most in need of prayers are still alive, however cast-off we might be - where life's gone on whether fate seems to have intended it or not - a dead-inside heretic of a Sanzo praying for a forgotten, innocent prisoner of five hundred years, a gambler that never should've been born…

And a fledgling youkai with nothing to go back to, building a grave for a victim nobody else cared enough to defend.

A prayer for the dead said for the living - but perhaps it's the only appropriate prayer for people who're living in spite of the best efforts of the world to take everything away.

By the time I reach the end of it, Gonou's finished his caern, kneeling before it with his back to us, and the sunrise has begun clearing from burning red to blue. For a moment, there's a peaceful calm over the hillside, silence save for a breeze and birdsong.

Then there's a sudden movement from Gonou that I can't make out at first, except that there's a renewed flow of fresh blood on the stones as he collapses.

"Fuck!" In an instant, all three of us are scrambling to his side, and the one word's trailed off as it's my turn to mutter a string of profanity under my breath. Gojyo helps me shift Gonou onto his back, to get a better look at the wound, Goku's already dumping out our pack to retrieve the bandages and supplies I keep. Gonou's drenched down the front with his own blood, turning a nasty shade of pale, how the Hell did he practically gut himself that quickly - he was bleeding already, he must've just reopened the wound, there's no way we can get him back to town like this, Gojyo's actually keeping him from literally falling apart and already snatching up the cloths Goku's tossing our way to try to staunch the blood.

"Needle, thread, hot water!", I snap at Goku, and snatch a flask from the pile of other supplies - not my somewhat spiked tea, the stronger whiskey, that Goku's griped "could peel paint". He passes me needle and thread, then flinches as he realizes he needs a fire and dashes off gathering firewood for the hot water.

I take the lid off the flask and drop it, and there's a momentary conflict between Gojyo and I as I'm trying to move him to his side again and Gojyo's trying to staunch the bleeding and keep him prone before I snap, "I need to clean the wound!" He blinks with a "yessir" and helps shift Gonou so the alcohol drains out, keeping a hand with one of the cloths so that Gonou's organs stay inside where they belong. Gonou's aura is still there, he's still breathing, he's not dead yet, that's what counts, but whatever's left of the whiskey is going for me when this is over; you'd think someone who's killed as many times as I have would be less rattled by the sight of blood and this kind of injury. I'm not sure if everything is exactly where it's supposed to be, but it looks about right and I'm going to end up taking him straight to a doctor anyway.

It's strange how it's easier to cause wounds than to deal with it aftewards; cause an injury, it's one shot and you can turn away, work on closing it and you have to study it, go over every detail of the damage, the ragged lines where the wound had almost healed before it was pulled open again…and realizing that the scar tissue spreads further than the reopened injury enough to make suturing it shut almost an impossibility; I ended up settling for enough of a jury-rig that we could move him without worrying about anything falling out, then snatching the small metal teakettle from where Goku's been holding it over the fire on a stick; we may not be able to boil the rags we'd kept with us here, this will have to do.

It doesn't take any communication to get help from Gojyo bandaging him enough to stop most of the bleeding and keep him together; Goku just sits hunched next to the caern, watching with silent worry. Once that's done, there's a pause; Gojyo checks briefly that he's still breathing, while I just kneel next to him, wiping the blood off my hands. I don't bother with the red stains on my white robes, it's a lost cause by now anyway, and as long as the idiot lives, it won't bother me.

Goku leans in to look up at both of us, watching our faces. "Is he going to be okay?"

"He'd better be. We'll need to get him to a doctor before we can take him back to Chang'An." I give Gojyo a pointed look on that one; he's local, he said he'd had a doctor in to look at Gonou before.

"Any particular reason you're worried?" There's that challenge again, baiting me, trying to draw me out.

"I was ordered to bring him back to the Temple of the Setting Sun to stand trial, and corpses don't stand trial. That's all I'm worried about." The brief "yeah, right" look Goku gives me mirrors the murmur from some half-dead corner of my mind that I've been trying to ignore; it's almost impossible that this is going to end well, particularly when Gonou wants to die like this, and I'm going to stay detached, Damnit. Fortunately Gojyo seems to have been intent enough on reading my expression to have missed Goku's. There's another quiet pause. "I'm not carrying him.", I point out, and again I look to Gojyo; Gonou may be at least as light-built as I am, but he's still taller than me, and doubtless outweighs me; and while Goku might be strong enough, it'd be awkward enough that Gonou would likely get hurt further en route.

"Wha? Me? But-"

The glance up turns into a 'do or I'll kill you' glare.

"Alright, I'll carry him.", he mutters grudgingly, picking Gonou up with a slight, almost imperceptible wince; it occurs to me that I'd caught him pretty hard in the ribs last night, but as much as he's blowing it off, it shouldn't be that bad.

The trip back to town is mostly quiet except for the occasional commentary from Goku; Gojyo seems to have mercifully given up on pressing buttons on me. I end up fighting the urge, more than once, to look back and check; if Gonou got any worse, Gojyo would say something, or call a halt. He's too protective to do anything less, and seems slightly less leery of me by now. The temptation to fret reaches a point where I finally give in, pull out a cigarette as I'm walking, and light it, letting the worse parts of the raw nerves drain out into the smoke. Worrying more here won't do me any good; getting back to town, to a doctor, is the best I can do right now.

Wait, I'm not worried.

Damnit.

Within seconds I can feel that confused, questioning look from behind. A quick glance back confirms that I'm getting another look of dumbfounded disbelief. Hell, it's not like Goku hadn't said it outright earlier... "What?!", I snap back at him.

"Nothing, nothing..." If his hands were free, I don't doubt they'd be in the air in feigned innocence.

So maybe I do act more like a criminal than a priest. Maybe I should be surprised my identity's not challenged more often; maybe I should kill this train of thought since I don't need an identity crisis when lives are at stake.

Concentrate on the task at hand. Get Gonou to a doctor until he's well enough to walk back to Chang'An, to stand trial for over a thousand deaths, however redundant it might seem with how intent he seems on punishing himself, however much sympathy I probably shouldn't be feeling right now. Not all of the victims of his vengeance were guilty, as much as many of them had earned it. There is no justice here, only cleaning up lost and broken pieces.

"Nyaah, how slow can you two get?" Goku's running back from where the path disappears into the trees; I hadn't even realized he'd gotten out of sight. "We need to hurry up and get him to a doctor, right? What's taking you guys so long?"

"You think I don't know that?! I'm going as fast as I can here!" Gojyo griping from behind me saves me the trouble of responding for the moment.

"He's too thin to be that heavy! You're just slow! Sanzo, can't we get there any faster?"

"We're moving as fast as we can without hurting Gonou, so shut up and learn what patience is, stupid monkey!"

He stops sullenly and waits for us to catch up, then trudges along just in front of me, kicking rocks out of the road here and there and muttering darkly. I catch a louder word here and there, "Still say it's too slow", "Have a name damnit", "gonna die before we get there at this rate.".

I look back while I'm walking; his breathing looks even at least, and if he's still bleeding it's not visible, so it's at least slowed if not stopped. He may not be in good shape, but he should be stable enough to make it to a doctor.

Gojyo stops. "Something wrong?"

"Just keep walking." I don't wait to see if he's going to keep up; his footsteps start back up when he realizes that.

"You really need to stop doing this to me.", I can hear him mutter to Gonou. I'm probably still going to have to assume that Gojyo might interfere with taking Gonou back to Chang'An.

When we get into town, it's well into the morning, and while we draw quite a bit of attention, nobody seems inclined to bother us; that makes this easier. I back off to let Gojyo take the lead, since he knows where the doctor is; he's slowing down more, starting to look tired and dragging. It's not too surprising; none of us have gotten any sleep, and I even catch Goku yawning in between muttering about breakfast.

Goku gets the door, and before he's even inside Gojyo tiredly calls, "Guess who's back.".

The doctor - middle aged, thinning dark hair, lines starting to show in his face - gets up from his desk, waving his teenage assistant to go on in back. "What happened?"

"Wound reopened. Pretty bad." Good Gojyo; this situation's messy enough without telling the doctor how it reopened.

"Anything to do with the gunshots last night?" The doctor sounds resigned, like he'd almost expected it; like this kind of trouble isn't new around here.

"Something like that."

"And you're just getting him here now?"

"Well, it wasn't exactly - we got here as soon as we - Talk to him!" Gojyo jerks his head back at me; the doctor looks startled at first, then gets an appraising, warning look, and I put my cigarette out. The assistant pokes his head out of the back room, and the doctor motions us all toward it.

"Get him safe, I'll be getting my things, I'll ask later. Neither of you smoke in here!" He jabs the warning at me and Gojyo, who whimpers slightly; and I thought my withdrawal got bad. His assistant follows him, casting curious looks back at us as we disappear into the back room.

Gojyo lays Gonou down, grinding his teeth with a clear wince, one hand going to his ribs where I'd kneed him briefly as he straightens up; he must've been hiding that it bothered him the whole time - no wonder he's been so short.

Goku bounces over and pokes him right in the surprisingly large red and black bruise; he squawks awkwardly and almost doubles over, twitching and looking ready to strangle Goku. "Heeey, Sanzo, how hard did you hit him?" Apparently hard enough; I'd caught him by surprise, and he'd been so intent on blocking the door that he hadn't moved with it at all - I might've broken something without realizing it. Gojyo takes a weak swing at him, which he dodges easily. "You should get that looked at!" Any pang of guilt is lessened by my own bruises, sore spots, and raw nerves.

I push the door open a crack, leaning out just enough to see the door the doctor had gone through. "There's more than one idiot wounded in here." As the door shuts again, from the wounded, angry look Gojyo's giving me, you'd think I'd kicked him again.

It only takes a few minutes for the doctor to get back, setting Gonou's shirt aside and stripping off the bloodied bandages we'd put there. "So how did this happen?"

"There was a scuffle last night; things got complicated. The wound didn't get reopened until sunrise, but we were aways from town by then."

"Who tried to stitch the wound?" He's cutting out the stitches.

"I did. We couldn't move him with it open like that."

"Well, I can't fault you that, but you can't keep a wound like this stitched; the best we can do at this point is keep it bandaged tightly enough to hold everything in, and get him to a youkai healer as soon as possible." The doctor pauses in cleaning the wound to rub his eyes. "The closest that I know of, at this time, is in Chang'An."

That gets a sharp "Feh" from Gojyo and a mistrusting glare at me; he knows it gives me an easy excuse to take him as soon as he can walk, and I'm willing to bet he's planning on following.

"You said someone else was wounded?", he adds while finishing winding the fresh bandages.

"Gojyo." I wave a hand at the dark mark he's trying to hide under his vest.

The doctor stands in front of where he's sitting, and he sullenly takes off the vest, leaning back so the doctor can examine it, oblivious of the staredown that's started; Gojyo doesn't break it even when he winces slightly as the doctor's feeling out how bad the damage is. "How did this happen?"

"Oh, just some overzealous, corrupt, bitchy, violent, hypocritical pissant." I mime a slight mock-bow in reply; the doctor's back is to me and his attention on the injury, so he doesn't see.

"Well, they're not completely broken...just cracked rather badly. You'll need to keep them bandaged and stay at home resting for at least a week."

"A...week?"

If this means what I think it means...

The doctor turns and motions for the other bandages; I gather up the ones next to me and toss them to Gojyo, who catches them one-handed with a glower.

"How long's he gonna be out?"

"Mmm, probably a day and a half; he'll need someone to help him to Chang'An right then, and you need to rest..."

"I'll do it - it would be no trouble at all; I was going to Chang'An anyway." The doctor raises an eyebrow at the odd smug edge on my mood. This makes things so much easier, if I don't have to worry about keeping track of Gojyo or wondering about what Gojyo is going to do; I have enough to worry about with Gonou.

"Well, that will make this simpler."

"But-but-"

The doctor doesn't even turn around, 'I don't want to know' written all over his face. "Your dedication to helping is admirable, Gojyo, but if you travel in that condition, you'll only break your ribs further."

Gojyo grumbles a response and hunches over, glaring sullenly at me.

"I'll have other patients to take care of; can you keep an eye on him for a while?"

"I'll stay here."

Gojyo wordlessly scrunches more into the bench, making it clear he's not going everywhere.

The doctor bustles out, pausing only to re-iterate the no-smoking rule, leaving us alone with Gonou. There's a terse silence while Gojyo sulks at me for a few minutes. I indulge the staredown, then notice that Goku's been unusually quiet; he's sitting cross-legged on the ground near Gojyo, nodding off. Nothing seems to bother him for long.

"Goku!"

He starts awake suddenly. "HuhIwasn'sleepingwhendoweeat?"

I toss a small bag of coins to him. "Go get food and bring it back; we're staying here for now."

"Should I get anything for Gojyo?"

"I don't care, just don't waste money."

He darts out, leaving the door to swing shut in his wake.

"Well, looks like you win this one." The words drip with derision.

"I told you, you can't protect him forever."

His face lapses into a brief snarl, then he breaks out of the challenging glare, turning more pensive watching Gonou sleep; he flips out a cigarette, but doesn't light it, just holding it in his mouth thoughtfully.

"You know what he did - why are you so protective?" Too tired to put the usual sting into it, and there's no reason to here anyway; he can't feasibly challenge me anymore.

"Put enough time into keeping him in one piece; why shouldn't I be?"

"You know you could be ruled an accomplice for helping him, nevermind if anyone else comes after him on personal vengeance. Why risk getting yourself in trouble over his crimes?"

"What, you gonna try and arrest me too?" The edge to his voice promises a fight, even while he's hurt, if I so much as move his direction.

"Feh. I've gotten you out of my hair for the trip back, I'm not going to mess that up. I just want to know why you're so involved." And how likely he might be to do something stupid - I've learned to always bet on stupidity.

"Y'know, I'm not sure." He looks back to Gonou, the challenging edge vanishing almost immediately. "At first, I just found him torn up and couldn't just leave'im like that...and he was a nice enough sort, even if he was a bit depressed all the time, insisted on helping out, even with the messy stuff...an' when I started finding bits out, well..." For the first time, he looks at me without hostility or suspicion. "I thought about it, and I couldn't really blame him; if I ever found someone that important to me, and had somethin' like that happen to'em, I don't know what I'd do." _If I ever_ _found someone important _- everything I've heard is that he lives mostly alone, nobody seems to know much about where he came from, just some womanizing gambler with crimson hair and eyes that nobody here seems to grasp the significance of, and old scars nobody seems to know the story behind. "Besides," he twirls a lock of red around one finger, gazing at it distantly, "he's the first other person to call this the color of blood." Great; so everyone here besides Goku is morbid.

"Blood isn't the only thing that color."

He flinches in surprise, then leans back against the wall. "Well, I guess I just got a bit lonely then. Not like you'd probably understand that, eh?"

Fuck. I should've known he couldn't stay away from challenging me for long. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Well, you've got the kid with you all the time, he said you lived in the temples and had some rank, eh? Power, authority, all the other priests..."

"Goku is just some stupid castoff I found that I can't push off on anyone else, and the other monks are all thoughtless fools that never mean what they say and think acting holy and moralistic somehow makes them better than everyone else."

"So you are lonely." He says it matter-of-fact, and far too smug.

"I don't need anyone else." My best ruffled, imperious glare isn't leaving a dent; he knows he hit a nerve somewhere in there, one corner of his mouth quirking upward in triumph.

He produces a deck of cards practically out of nowhere, shuffling easily. "You work pretty hard to cut everyone out, don'tcha, priest-boy? What're you so afraid of, anyway?"

I'm not going to take the bait this time.

"You've got a lot of spite for anything holy, and you certainly don't act it yourself, so it can't be that someone might figure out you're not the perfect meek little priest." He starts toying with the cards, fanning them as he shuffles, showing off. "Kid says you're high up, but you're quicker with the gun than you are with your rank, so you're not insecure in your authority." He flips out two of the kings, flashing them between his fingers and slipping them back into the deck as he's riffling through it. "The whole pissy bit about you not being a hitman - you get that a lot, don'tcha? Really rubs you the wrong way; like you don't like the criminal types either, so you're not as corrupt as you look. But y'know the strongest reaction I've seen outta you so far, only time you've consistently dropped your guard?" He claps the deck between his hands, eyeing me with a sly, eager grin; I pull back closer against the wall. "All your cool goes 'piff' when someone gets hurt who's not supposed to." He holds up the top card - Ace of Hearts.

Showoff.

"And that, is why I'll be a good boy and stay here and heal while you take him to Chang'An, because I'm willing to lay strong odds that you're not going to let anything happen to him, bitch though you might be." He's acting far, far too pleasant; I'd put a bullet through some of that red hair he's so funny about, but he'd only take it to mean he's right and I do care.

He flips the ace back into the deck, his eyes never leaving my face; the more chill I put up, the more smug he seems to get.

Before it reaches a point that there's gunshots, Goku bursts in the door juggling bags and boxes that most would call enough for six people. We'll probably still end up packing some of it with us; he always overshops.

"Sanzo, I got din-" He freezes, looking between me and Gojyo curiously. "I'll just start putting stuff down then." He pulls one of the boxes out and passes it to Gojyo. "Here! Got this for you."

He blinks in brief surprise, then puts away the still-unlit cigarette and takes it with a sunny, "Why thank you."; glancing at me, he tags on, "At least someone here has some manners."

"Sanzo? What about him?" Goku points to Gonou. "Is he gonna be okay without eating this long?"

"I'd have to ask the doctor to be sure, but I don't think it's a good idea to try to put food into someone with a gut wound like that."

I lean down snatching a container of soup and ignoring the rest; I'm not really feeling up to eating much. Looking at even that gets the hint of nausea I've learned to heed as a warning - the 'food not welcome here' sign. There's only one thing that seems to help it; I'd resolved to claim the rest of the whiskey anyway. Somewhere while I'm eating, drinking, and seeking some kind of peace and quiet, I realize that once again I'm getting the disbelieving look from Gojyo.

"Y'know, at this point, all you've got to do is go out picking up women."

That calls for another shot of whiskey and pointedly ignoring him.

"That doesn't make any sense...what's that supposed to mean?"

"Don't ask.", I snap at Goku.

"...Hey, that's the same kind of don't-ask-twitch you got when I asked why that drunk girl was trying to hang off you, or why that other lady you were avoiding kept saying it was too bad you were a monk, or why you broke that one guy's elbow backwards in that place you called the bad part of town or why you pulled your gun on..." He continues on in that vein for a few minutes, Gojyo getting more and more of a bemused smirk while I bury my head in my hands and try to disappear into me robes, finally growling, "Shut. Up." , in a tone that promises injury if not complied with.

Gojyo finishes eating before I'm done picking at mine or Goku's done decimating what was brought in; after sitting drowsily for a few seconds, he stands, and starts to walk out.

"Where are you going?"

He stops next to me, in front of the door. "Home. He's not gonna be up for a while, and I haven't slept in two days; as long as you behave, I've got no reason to hang around here while he's out."

I shrug, and go back to ignoring him as he leaves.

Goku does a lot of the picking up while the lack of sleep starts catching up to me; I try to stave it off, and don't even realize I've failed until I start awake, already snatching the doctor's wrist in a prelude to either twisting it immobile or doing damage. It looks like my reflexes have about given him a heart attack; I let go and lean back, still feeling drowsy; Goku's curled up by the far wall, still asleep.

"All I did was tap your shoulder, you were asleep when I walked in!"

I mumble something dismissive at first, not really trying to make it anything coherent. "How long have I been here?"

"Several hours; it's after sunset. I'm going to be closing up here."

"It's probably not a good idea to move him right now, is it?" It's not so much a question as a tired statement checking for confirmation.

"Not unless he can be kept steady the whole time."

"We'll stay here then." With the way things are going lately, I'm not taking my eyes of him for a second; there's doubtless still someone after him. "Just in case."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah. Go ahead and lock up; we'll be here in the morning."

"…I'll leave a set of keys here in case you need anything then; I'll be back tomorrow." He sets down a ring of keys next to me on the bench, keeping a cautious distance now, and backs out.

There's probably enough in what's left over from lunch to scratch a dinner out of when Goku wakes up; I doubt I'll need to use the keys for much. It's dark, and quiet, and I'm the only one awake. Gonou still looks too pale, especially in the dark; too much blood lost, but at least he shouldn't get any worse. I'm half-tempted to smoke, just for something to do in the dark, but I'm not about to break the doctor's prohibition.

He looks so frail and fragile, bandages on his face and around his stomach, shadows cast over his face marking his bone structure starkly, almost barely seeming to breathe in the twilight; like something would break if he were moved or touched wrong. It's almost hard to believe, seeing him like this, that he practically wiped out two entire clans of youkai single-handedly; if I hadn't seen that glimpse of something in his eyes and aura last night, I might've questioned that this was the man I was looking for, even with his own admission of guilt, much less that he might have it in him to be more dangerous than I am. My worst record in one night so far is what, fourteen? Probably more than that in some of the tangles in the bad parts of the cities, but I didn't have much cause to stick around and keep count those nights.

Not like he seems inclined to do something like that again, or Goku'd be dead now.

Frail, fragile, vulnerable…definite danger to self, possible danger to others; can't walk on the rapids when the river thaws.

The temple can't execute him, but the rate he's going, it's not very likely he'll live long after anyway; all I need to worry about is my job here, getting him back to Chang'An in one piece.

Why do I always get the fucked up cases?

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The first thing I'm aware of the next morning is being poked with a stick, a stick that is very swiftly in pieces, and my own hissing growl.

"Good morning! The doctor brought breakfast by when he came in this morning, yours is right here, I finished off the stuff from last night though, he was kinda afraid to wake you up for some reason so I said I'd do it, not that I really blame him, that wrist trick stings and you're always so cranky when you wake up!" Nobody should be allowed to be that cheerful in the morning. There's coffee on the tray, however, and that's enough to prevent a murder.

There's light coming in from outside; probably well enough into the morning, but it's still before noon. Day and a half…that gives us until sometime this afternoon most likely, early evening maybe. Gojyo's doubtless going to be back to see us off before then, and that'll be another opportunity for him to change his mind about taking care of his ribs and try to follow us; he's just stupid enough to do it, too.

If I have to put up with him for another day, I will kill him.

That leaves the option of leaving town before Gojyo can catch us; but that's probably going to require moving Gonou before he's awake somehow.

"Goku - can you go find a merchant, or someone with a cart I can hire, who's heading out of town toward Chang'An who'll get us partway out of town before Gonou wakes up?"

"Is it really OK to move him like that?"

"We need to get him to Chang'An as soon as possible, and the longer we stay here, the more likely something else will catch up chasing him." Perfectly valid and accurate reasons, I'm just leaving out the other, more ulterior motive.

"What about Gojyo?" That look of unblinking innocence, and just what I was trying to avoid.

"We'll fill him in later; he needs to heal. It's more important to get moving."

Goku nods and runs out to do that.

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I tell the farmer that gave us a lift on the haycart to drop us off by the side of the road when Gonou starts to stir; it's at least a few hours out of town, far enough that even if Gojyo's found out we're gone, we have a head start on him. It's a bright, warm, sunny day, and as incongruous as the good weather is at a time like this, at least it'll make the trip easier. Goku quickly finds various distractions while I just sit kneeling next to Gonou, propped up against a tree by the roadside. The cuts around his eye are still cringe-worthy, although they're cleaned up, and the doctor had insisted that the bandages not be on any longer than necessary - a risk of him going blind in that eye if it's not used while healing from that kind of trauma; of course, it's another injury that normal medicine and healing won't deal with properly.

He moves, shifting against the tree, with a flicker under his eyelids; waking up.

"If you ever pull a stunt like that again, I'll kill you." I've got too many raw nerves right now to care about the glaring fault in logic, threatening to kill someone for trying to commit suicide.

He opens his eyes, the right not quite tracking properly with the left, just staring off into space, then closes them again, shaking slightly, with the calm, gloomy look changing to one of utter suffering. I catch his chin, forcing him to look at me; there's nothing but cold, hopeless despair in his eyes or the aura that's gnawing up my hand, impossible to ignore from the contact; the injured right eye ticks off away from me with red staining around the green, the left barely seems to focus. He's not walking for a while yet. "You are going to lie there and rest - my orders are to bring you back to the Temple of the Setting Sun ALIVE, got that?"

He pulls away, closing his eyes and looking away from me, the blank misery actually deepening. I amend out the "possible danger to others"; he doesn't have the mental strength in him to be a threat to anyone but himself right now, maybe not even that. Any punishment for his crimes seems more and more like a redundancy; he's self-destructing on his own, without any prodding from anyone, the trial's just going to be a formality.

I had to finish the whiskey before we left and not replace it, didn't I.


	3. Holiness and Hollowness

Slightly shorter update, due to where the convenient chapter breaks in events are. Nope, still don't own them.

And..uhm…warnings…some language, and very snippy angst.

Sanzo? Bitter? NEVER, whatever'd give you that idea?

Re-uploaded for an edit and rather large/important scene added.

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In good weather, keeping a decent pace, it's two days walk between the village and Chang'An; bad weather or slow travel drag it out to three or four, and we move at a crawl. It's not that I don't want to get him to Chang'An as soon as possible, to get him to a healer and get this whole fucked-up wreck over with, but I don't dare push him with his injuries - not that I think he'd complain if I did. He takes the three days walk never speaking, eating or sleeping only when commanded, mechanically following whatever pace I set with one distant, uninjured eye that doesn't even seem to see me or Goku, the wounded eye aimlessly elsewhere while he scratches at it now and then despite my best efforts to stop him. It's less like I'm leading a living person and more like I'm some necromancer from the old tales, forcing the unburied dead to follow my lead from where he fell to where the proper last rites can be done. A few times Goku even tries to talk to him, over meals or a campfire at the roadside; the most he gets is a vague acknowledgement that he's there. Goku hasn't complained about the slow pace once; opened his mouth once or twice after running ahead, then looked guiltily at Gonou, limping along just behind me, then usually joined us trudging along for a while, suddenly finding the road gravel inordinately and glumly fascinating. Traffic doesn't spare us a second look, although I catch a few pitying looks that hurry by faster, afraid to ask, when Gonou stumbles.

Gonou's walking dead, limping along brokenly waiting to be allowed to die; just like I was doing six, seven years ago.

Just like I think I'm still doing on some level; one walking corpse leading another.

The further we get, the more I find myself giving up; I've started caring about what happens here, it hurts too much to watch to honestly say everything's still dead like I'd believed. The more I admit that, the more it feels like I'm putting whatever's still alive to care in the noose to wait.

A day and a half out, between the worsening condition of his eye and the hints of damp where the bandage rests, threatening infection, I lead to a small clinic among a collection of buildings on the roadside. There's some travellers and local farm folk waiting; I pause long enough to check that there's no serious injuries or illnesses, and cut through the line to the front, just lucky enough to catch the doctor cleaning up from his last patient; he's a bit younger than the doctor back in the village.

"I'm on temple businesses; I have a young man with serious injuries that need to be tended before we can continue."

He starts to argue, pointing at the line; I fix him with a sharp look, and he glances between me and Gonou with a frown, sighs, and waves us in. Goku hops on a bench in the corner, watching and listening intently; Gonou blankly takes a seat on the table.

"Alright, what's wrong?" The question is addressed to Gonou, who doesn't even seem to hear.

"There's bandages on a gut wound that need to be changed so we can get him to a chi-healer, and his eye injury is getting worse."

He pauses in surprise that I've answered, and studies Gonou with an unsettled frown, as Gonou doesn't even look up. It's almost like he doesn't even notice when the doctor strips off his shirt to check the bandage, wincing with a murmur of shock at the seriousness of the injury. "What happened?"

"Youkai attack." Like I'm going to go into this one with a roadside clinic.

He changes the bandages with a sort of timid caution, as though almost afraid to handle the wound, and pauses with visible relief when the new bandages are wound, another awkward pause when he realizes Gonou has yet to acknowledge his presence. "Alright, let's look at that eye." It seems less like he's trying to talk, than that he's staving off any reaction in standard clinic chatter; as he wrings out a rag of warm water and reaches to clean Gonou's eye, Gonou reacts for the first time, flinching away, starting to tremble again as the eye is cleaned. Once the dried blood is gone, the doctor starts examining it, holding Gonou's face steady in the light gently; Gonou flinches again when the doctor lifts the lid to examine the eye itself, breath catching into a low, breathless whistle through his teeth. "The cuts go almost all the way through the lid...there's an old blood clot caught under it that looks like it's been there a day or so, it's probably what's been irritating it." It's a small relief that his scratching may not've been purely self-destructive. "I'll clean out what I can, but it will start bleeding again, and if it gets damaged any further he might lose the eye; you're close enough to Chang'An that it might be best to keep a bandage over it until he sees a healer, just to keep anything else from getting stuck under it." It's like he's gotten used to the idea, by now, that Gonou won't acknowledge or answer, and everything is directed to me.

Gonou twitches with a slight whimper as the doctor removes the clot, hunching over and pulling back again into the foggy distance as the eye is cleaned again and bandaged. The doctor releases us with a sort of quiet, marvelling worry, almost asking questions several times as he finishes and sends us on our way.

On the last day, we pass the traveler's shrine on the road close to Chang'An, offerings to the gods laid out around its feet for safe passage.

The gods save no one.

When I stop alongside it, studying it coldly, Gonou comes to a slow halt, not even looking up, just standing still waiting for me to move again; Goku looks back, recognizing the look, and hops into a low-hanging tree branch to watch in resigned patience for whatever fit of pique just struck. It's daytime, heavy traffic, and I'm both too sober and too on-duty to cuss the shrine out like I'd like; but that doesn't mean I can't say a prayer.

And if the quiet sutra sounds bitter, sarcastic, or cynical to anyone, they're just listening close enough to catch what I actually mean.

_I bet you think this is hilarious, don't you - turning him into all my worst parts. Take some other poor unsuspecting sucker with a happy life, and ruin it and a lot of others just so you can remind me what I really am; and if this was some warped way of answering my wish that something would be done about Hyakugan Maoh, you can have that rusty poleaxe Gojyo was talking about a few days ago - I'm sure you'll know what to do with it. What the fuck did I ever do to you anyway, to get this kind of lead-touch karma, eh? Oh, no, can't do the simple, honest thing and throw me in a dungeon to be tortured for a few decades; you have to get creative, play a bank shot, and make sure everyone I even think about helping suffers. What's the point of this one? Don't tell me you didn't have a hand, either, when you had the damned Sanbutshin tell me to do it; had to make sure I knew it was your idea, to make me a part of this, all this blood and misery. What, did you realize there might be something in me you assholes hadn't broken yet? Can't have that, now, can we? Well, you know what? This red on my hands is blood, and just like I know some of his victims were perfectly innocent, I know some of mine haven't deserved it either, and when I die this life, you can go ahead and give me a tour of the Hells for it; I'm sure the demons, who're at least honest about their torments, are better company than you jokers any day, and it'd be a nice break from this fucked up cosmic joke you call a life. _

_ Sons of bitches._

When I turn to continue on, Gonou hasn't moved from where he stands until I start walking again. Goku hops back to the road with a curious look and a list of questions about how I never pray to the gods, trying to figure out when the other shoe's going to drop or if it already has and he just didn't see it.

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I've barely gotten in the gates when some acolyte catches me with a message that I'm to bring him directly to the temple, no detours. Of course the kid doesn't have the authority to tell me any more than that, or for me to argue at all, that's why they sent a lower acolyte instead of one of them telling me themselves; make it so I have to go there to argue, which means bringing him and precludes whatever I'd be arguing anyway. As soon as the message is delivered and I've recognized the futility of snapping at the flinching student, he races back to let them know I'm here.

And apparently, they managed to hear one way or another of my progress down the road, enough to know when I was going to show up, and be ready and waiting. They're probably hoping to move things along quickly enough to make it hard for me to argue with them or their decisions. Of course, now that they've been warned I'm there, they've all made it to the great hall, leaving me with nothing but students and monks without the authority for anything I say on the way in to do any good. I snap instructions at Goku to try not to cause too much trouble and dismiss him to free run of the temple, and lead Gonou to the great hall.

Even at the gate to the hall, it's just one of the lower functionaries, a glorified secretary, who meets us, with one of the guards shifting nervously behind him, carrying shackles; there's a moment of disbelief as he sees the young man behind me.

The first active thing Gonou's done in days is to hold out his hands for the shackles.

"That won't be necessary." The monk holding the shackles freezes; it's hard to tell who he's more afraid of, me or Gonou.

Gonou turns to look me in the eye, keeping a steady gaze. "It's okay." It's almost as if he's barely remembering how to speak, just enough to say that; an aura-prickle from the one unbandaged green eye, all worthlessness and guilt, soul bleeding out onto the stones. The phantom noose tightens with a jerk, old knives in old wounds twisting at my own helplessness to do anything. The only consolation is that they can't execute him and still be good little Buddhists; he's not walking to his death.

"Fine then, suit yourself." I turn away as the shackles click shut, a raw feeling in my throat; it probably won't even matter what judgement passes, the wreckage this mess's been from the start is still twisting away inexorably, dragging out in front of me.

The door opens as we're announced; the functionary stays outside, shutting the door behind us, Gonou walking beside me between the two rows of all the highest-ranking priests and monks in the temple kneeling on cushions, the only light coming from candles spaced along the walls, the head of the temple sitting up a few steps at the far end of the room; a place has been left empty for me at the head of the right row, another marked out in the middle in front of it for Gonou. I walk to it staring straight ahead, without looking at or acknowledging any of the other priests. Gonou kneels obediently at the bottom of the steps.

"Cho Gonou, you are brought before us today to answer for your crimes. You have killed two entire clans of youkai, numbering roughly one thousand in all. What excuse do you give for your actions?" His voice echoes through the silent stone chamber; he speaks strongly, for someone who's barely set foot outside this temple in his life, has no real comprehension of what the world outside is, and who's expressed a desire to see me in the spot Gonou's kneeling now more than once, stopped only by my rank as Sanzo.

"None." The near-whisper is picked up by the stone walls, mixed with a wave of surprise that moves through the room; I'm sure they'd all expected protestations of innocence, or at least an attempt at explanation of motives; when the normal law enforcement defers to the temple as a neutral authority, it's never a simple matter.

"Do you admit to these heinous actions and accept whatever sentence is given to you for your crimes?" He's still poised and expecting some challenge, some argument back.

"I do." Gonou looks up calmly. It's probably not my imagination that there's a brief flinch from the head of the temple, but it's only momentary before he recovers his usual holier-than-thou attitude.

"Then for your crimes you will atone, through fasting and meditation, one day for each of your victims. You will spend each day meditating on one of the innocents you killed, and how they might have lived their lives had you not cut their days short."

What.

The.

FUCK?! Goddamned fucking BASTARDS! Trust these hypocritical self-righteous sons of bitches to not only find a loophole out of "Never take another life", but to find a way to do it and assure a slow, horrible death. I look at the others assembled for the first time, scanning the room without moving, trying to find any trace of a smug flicker that might tell me whose idea this was; the calm, approving mutter gives no real clues, although I can think of a few I'm going to have words with later, one of whom catches my gaze and flinches - especially words with -him-. Gonou bows without any sign of caring what he's just been sentenced to; if this is what I brought him all the way here and went to all this trouble for, why didn't they just tell me to shoot him when I found him and get it over with quickly and cleanly?

"That's hardly a fair sentence." Gonou looks up at me in surprise. "This man will die long before the thousand days are up." There's a large number of 'don't-tell-me-Genjo-Sanzo-the-psychopath-is-getting-a-sense-of-mercy-now' stares settling on me; one of these days, they're going to push their little too-holy-to-care games too far, and I'm going to snap and kill every one of them. I've killed priests before, I know I'm capable. Something clicks in my head from three ways, that I may yet be able to do something to make this salvageable and beat them at their own game, yank their loophole out from under them. "For sins as serious as his, he should suffer much more than a mere handful of days before his body gives out." And it'd probably be less than that, with his wounds. "Death would only be an escape for him; he should be made to live every day with the knowledge of what he's done, and devote his life to atonement for his crimes." That flinch away from living is showing in his eye again, as he drops his head and slumps in front of me. Dying like this would change nothing; leave behind some wreckage of a tragedy for people to shake their heads at in later days and forget about.

"Surely you can't be serious; this judgement was not made with suffering as an intent, only atonement." Gods I hate him.

"My statement stands regardless; death by starvation is suffering whether you choose to acknowledge that or not, and for over a thousand lives, a few days of suffering is measly penance. He has expressed that his life has no worth, so it's not like he's gaining anything by living save more time to spend in atonement, and if that is the true goal of this judgement, than is it not more worthy that he should live until he's made -proper- restitution for his crimes?" My attention is entirely and coldly on the head of the temple, daring him to go ahead - find some way to argue that he's not really trying to execute Gonou without getting blood on his hands.

"I'm afraid that we cannot release him with no further comment; there must be some proper punishment made. One should not be allowed to walk away from the taking of a life without atonement." A sharp edge on that sentence, a subtle jab at me. "We cannot turn a blind eye to such deeds forever." A not so subtle jab at me.

"Then allow the name of Cho Gonou to die here, to become a new life dedicated to payment for these crimes." Symbolic death, not a rare occurrence in the temple at all.

"Do you really believe a simple symbolic death and taking of a new name would be sufficient for even one tenth of his crimes?" Pure disbelief and aloof arrogance.

"Far moreso than a few brief, cut off days of torment."

"I am afraid we cannot agree with this judgement; something must be done to properly acknowledge the magnitude of his sins. Even should he be allowed to continue as another life, he must be made to comprehend his actions."

Fine then; make me play dirty. "If you feel that strongly about this simple murderer's case, I could always take it up before the Sanbutshin, as they have, after all, apparently taken an interest in requesting my direct involvement with, and responsibility for, Cho Gonou." That's two not-so subtle reminders; first that I technically can gain an audience with the Sanbutshin without being summoned, and therefore outrank him, potentially enough to override him outright; and second, that the Sanbutshin themselves made Cho Gonou my responsibility.

He flags with a wounded expression, shocked whispers running through the others. "That…truly won't be necessary; perhaps we could seek a compromise?" There's a badly-quelled whining undertone beneath his carefully groomed arrogance.

"Perhaps, if proper terms can be met that do not involve a misnamed execution." Sour whispers and mutters all around me; they don't like being called on their hypocrisies.

"We shall concede life as perhaps a more proper fate in this instance, and the death of Cho Gonou. However, surely you must agree that some concession must be made to the seriousness of his crimes, and to the building of a proper foundation for a new life?"

"That will depend upon the form the concession takes." I'm not giving up the upper hand in this so easily.

"Maintain the thousand days of atonement as an acolyte here, to be given a new name at the end of that period; of course he will be under your direct supervision for that entire time, being your responsibility." One thousand days...just under three years, cooped up in here, calling him "Hey you" for lack of a name, both putting up with the other assholes here and trying to keep them from harassing him too badly. Oh fuck no, he knows I won't go along with that.

"And of course, as my responsibility, any details of that atonement, including decisions on alterations to its exact length, will be at my discretion."

He shifts uncomfortably, realizing that he gave me that loophole to work with, and if he argues, he'll be hanging his own arguments. "Very well. These terms are accepted."

All eyes fall on Gonou, who's kneeling slumped, with no reaction; aura gone to a dark roil turned in on itself. He may not've even heard a word that was just said.

The head of the temple clears his throat. "Cho Gonou, hear your sentence!", he snaps; Gonou flinches and looks up. "Cho Gonou is hereby sentenced to immediate death. You, nameless one, will remain here as a lowly acolyte and purify yourself through atonement and abstinence. The honored Genjo Sanzo will be responsible for your actions, so mind you act appropriately to repay him for sparing your life." They'd better leave what's appropriate to my discretion; and of course now his life is being spared, although they claimed they weren't trying to kill him. "You will be under his care for one thousand days, or until he judges that you have atoned for your sins, at which time you will return here and be baptized with a new name to fit your new life."

The echoes fade out; the now-nameless looks stunned and dumbfounded as the lines start filing out, not moving until I stand and start to walk past him. The functionary is already waiting with a note of further bureaucracy; at this rate, I'm not going to be able to get him to the healer until tomorrow morning.

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The candles in the chamber of the Sanbutshin gutter as I pass, eyes on the floor; I stop to kneel in front of them, never looking up. It's enough that I'm trying to burn a hole in the floor by staring at it, I'm tempted enough to remember that I could bitch out the Gods' representatives directly, instead of ranting at poor innocent shrines here and there, without looking up. I think all that stops me some days is that dealing civilly with them is part of my job, and I was trusted with this job by someone whose opinion actually mattered to me.

"Genjo Sanzo." How nice of them to be slightly informal; if I hear my full title today any more than I have to, I might kill something.

"I brought him here." Go ahead, ask me how it went.

"...Good." They're thinking something over, but of course they're not going to fill me in on what's going on. I just wait for them to say something, or ask for further report, maybe volunteer an explanation for once, but it never comes. "You are dismissed."

I stand and turn without ever looking at them and sweep back out, my passing disturbing the candle flames again.

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After much running of errands, it's after sundown and I've barely caught a hazy snatch of dinner, my nameless charge is asleep in his cell, and I don't know of any healers I can catch at this hour, but there's one last unscheduled meeting I need to make.

I find a spot just out of easy sight by a pillar in the main hallway of the north wing of the temple, counting on routine and habit, watching a candle slowly burn down while I wait for one specific cadence of footsteps.

Sure enough, not ten minutes later there's a hurried tak-t-tak-tak-t-tak passing by, walking unusually fast on his way to his chambers.

"Good evening, Sir Constable-Intermediary." Caught him; the official in charge of dealings between the temple and secular authorities.

He misses a step at my voice, halting on the other side of the pillar. "Why, most honored Sanzo, what brings you to this hallway this late?" A nervous quaver tinges his voice.

"Well, seeing as how my chambers are here in the north wing, it shouldn't be that surprising. You seem to be in an unusual hurry, though." I have no need to rush; I'll give him his empty pleasantries, he knows damn well why I'm here.

"Just wrapping things up for the day, the usual…" He's skittering around the subject of why I hailed him down. "Mightn't you have some business to attend to?"

"Actually, I had hoped to have a talk with you about certain recent events." Cat-paw slams down on mouse-tail.

"Oh…really…which events would those be?"

"It would seem that everyone was quite well prepared for my arrival today."

"Oh yes, that…" He trails off with a slight nervous laugh.

"I would rather hope, that the sentence was merely something meant to test my responses, as a temple dedicated to the mercy of Buddha should be above such petty hypocrisies; but that's probably too much to ask, now isn't it? After all, if it had only been intended as a test, I doubt I would have had to invoke the Sanbutshin and my own authority to deal with that. You wouldn't happen to know whose idea it was, would you?" He can't get away without slighting me, and I outrank him, but I'm sure by now that he wants to escape rather badly.

"No, of course not!" Shades of a lie.

"Considering the affair at hand, that seems slightly suspicious; if I were to hazard a guess, I'd think you were rather likely to've had a hand in it."

"It most certainly was not my idea." The truth, but some other glimmer; not his idea, but he'd supported it.

"That's quite good for you; if it had been your idea, I'd have to think that you were dealing with certain associates again."

The nervous twinge shoots out to a colder fear. "I'm afraid I'm not entirely sure what you mean by that, Honored Sanzo."

"Well, then, I'll make it simple and straightforward. If I find out that you're taking payoffs, rolling over to threats, or otherwise letting certain criminal elements dictate your actions again…" I take out the pistol, click it open to check that it's loaded, then click it back together with a spin to the revolver's chambers, just to make sure he hears it. I can hear him swallow hard. "They're not the only ones that can make people disappear. You haven't been dealing with them lately, have you?"

"No - not at all, not that way." Mostly not a lie. Mostly.

"It might be wise to make sure that you don't, then." I walk out from behind the pillar, spinning the revolver around one finger just to make sure he sees me put it away as I head for the stairs leading up to my room.


	4. Quagmires

Yeesh, is this a gap. I had this chapter half-written on my PDA for months getting a word in here and there while classwork slaughtered me.

It's sorta amusing what comes out in one perspective that's background chatter to another....

And you know what? f you uploader >. ; I'll fix the formatting freaking LATER. Is it too much to ask that when the file uploaded has tab indents and standard paragraph/line spacing, to JUST HAVE IT STAY THE SAME when it's uploaded? 

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One would think that having a lock on my door and shutters on the window - even broken ones - in the temple would allow some peace in the mornings.

"Sanzo! It's time for breakfast!"

That assumption, of course, does not plan for Goku.

"San-zooo! Come on! You can't sleep all day!"

Sunrise was what...an hour ago? I haven't been asleep the last twenty minutes, just lying in bed trying to ignore the monkey banging at my door. "Come on Sanzo, stay in bed much longer and we're going to miss breakfast!" Sometimes, I suspect that his insistence on dragging me to eat when we're in the temple is just an insidious ploy to make sure I can't skip meals; he's known enough here that he could go get food from the kitchen all by himself. "Saaanzoooo!"

He quits banging on the door and yelling when I get out of bed, and actually gives me the time to get cleaned and dressed; when I open the door, he's standing right in front of it expectantly, then takes up basically running circles around me, launching into a narration of everything that'd gone on yesterday while I was busy, how cranky the groundskeeper is, that all the monks were stuffier than usual at him, and the one handling dinner had practically begrudged feeding him, and wait this isn't the way to the kitchen why were we going to the basement?

"I'm going to check on him first." And hopefully haul him to the healer, before anyone around the temple can come up with anything else to distract me with.

"Aaaaah.", he nods, and runs ahead, still talking a red streak; as I head down the stairs, one of the monks is only just lighting the candles in the dark stone hallway, and there's a few annoyed mutters and brief glares into the hall at Goku's chattering passage, which includes a "Heey Sanzo, they put someone in that room they tried to stick me with!"

I get curtly directed to the right cell by the monk lighting candles; after the initial murmur, there's a stony silence as everyone down there is waiting for us to finish our business and leave them in peace. The door clicks open with a creak onto the dim, small, bare stone room. There's little in the room but a small table, a rough wooden chair, and a small cot, where my now-nameless charge is asleep under a rough-woven blanket, curled uncomfortably. He doesn't wake at a nudge to his shoulder, though he cringes more into the blanket with a soft mumble; he seems chilled, trembling, and definitely doesn't look healthy. Dried blood is crumbling down his face from the bandage on his wounded eye. Even keeping a slow pace, making him walk three days was pushing hard with how much blood he'd lost and how badly injured he was; forcing him into more activity might be worse than leaving him rest, but if his condition gets any worse, rest won't help either.

I put a hand to his forehead to check; he's clammy and noticeably warmer than he should be, but not dangerously so, and once again his aura crawls up my arm in a dark, dismal, bloody spiral, coiling inward to devour itself. I pull my hand back with a chill of my own before I start overhearing his nightmares; the way he's been the last few days, I should've known that touching him to see if he's miserable was like sticking my hand in a campfire to see if it's hot.

"Is he gonna be OK? Shouldn't we get him to a healer?"

"We'll take him when he wakes up; for now he needs rest just as much." And to get cleaned up, and fresh clothes, which will mean I can't stay here and watch him and get that arranged, but if I leave him alone like this, I won't know if he starts getting worse. "I have things I need to get done while he's out; you keep an eye on him, and if he wakes up or seems to be getting worse, get me immediately."

"Right!" He pulls the chair over by the cot backwards and hops to perch on it. "Wait - what about breakfast?"

"We'll eat once we've gotten him to a healer."

I shut the door behind me as I leave, catching a few disgusted and irritated stares as the acolytes realize Goku's not leaving with me. The monk in charge of taking care of the lower cells tries to avoid me at first on his way out, until he realizes I've stood in his path and am not passing by as usual.

"Yes, Honored Sanzo?" His tone carries the dread of the realization that he's going to be seeing a lot more of me.

"I have a charge here; we've just come in from a long trip, he's injured, and will need a bath and a change of clothes before anything else. He's not in a condition to deal with the normal baths."

"Yes, Honored Sanzo." He's not acknowledging any action, just that yes, he heard me, and he comes within a fraction of an inch of rolling his eyes at me.

"He'll need a tub, soap, and water brought to his room, as well as a clean robe and a towel." If I leave anything out, they'll avoid it and pretend it wasn't obvious what I meant; saying it like I'm talking to a small child is only natural, since that's the level they keep making me work at to get anything done.

"Of course, Honored Sanzo." He hasn't looked directly at me once.

"See to it that's done as soon as possible, right after you're done here." No time loopholes to blow me off on either, I know he doesn't have much to do for another few hours unless some trouble starts, and if one of the acolytes starts trouble today, so help me I'll step in and deal with it myself, and there'll be a few more acolytes with permanent nervous twitches this year.

"Yes, Honored Sanzo." He doesn't budge until after I've turned and started to walk away.

I'm used to some degree of the other priests and monks here trying to distance themselves from me, but it's usually just the ones I've dealt with directly; as I try to get minor business done going over arrangements for my charge, even so much as flagging someone down seems to be pulling teeth, and whispers follow my back, everything dragging out ten times longer than it needs to be. It seems I've managed to walk into another time when gossip outweighs Right Speech and "Do Not Speak Ill Of Others"; even trying to get an idea who I need to look out for leads in circles.

There's only one place I can get straight answers without threats of violence on a day like this.

The library's silent and almost seems empty as I push the doors open and enter; no sign of the librarian or anyone else. The shelves and balconies form their own little labyrinth where it's easy to disappear, the very structure of the room seeming to muffle sound; there's total silence until I ring the chime on the desk by the door.

"Yesyesyes what?", comes from a set of shelves with a series of thumps; he must've been putting books away. The old man bustles out of the shelves on a balcony to my right, stopping when he sees me to adjust his glasses from the side and squint. "Oh. It's you." He takes a slower pace down the stairs, still squinting at me through his narrow lenses. "Taking in strays again, I hear. One can only hope this one will be better behaved than the last." He pauses at the bottom to lean on the railing. "Speaking of whom, the groundskeeper figured I'd see you before he did; do you want his message as he worded it, as he meant it, or do you have both versions memorized by now?"

I wave it off; the sky is still blue, grass is still green, the groundskeeper still hates Goku. "I'll get it from him directly later. I take it you heard about the trial yesterday?"

"Even the younger acolytes heard about the trial yesterday, and several permutations thereof; of course, I got tired of the gossip and read the functionary's verbatim record when I filed it. Frankly, I've never seen why the Temple should even be involved in deciding legal affairs that do not otherwise concern it, so it was doomed to be a farce from the beginning, although I'm surprised you two kept such civil tongues through that argument."

"Do you know whose idea the original sentence was?"

He sits down at his desk with a wry chuckle. "Aaah, politics - a fate only marginally worse than being devoured alive by ravenous wasps." There's a bemused glimmer in his eye as he looks up at me, still standing in front of the polished wood desk. "No; they didn't even inform me of when the meetings were to plan for this, and I haven't had a reason to check the archives for records of those discussions. You seemed quite irritated that they meant to hold the trial immediately, I understand; any particular reason?" He holds motionless waiting with a sharp, prodding gaze, blue eyes bright.

He would catch that through all the rumours. "He's wounded - stable for now, but as soon as he wakes up, I will be taking him to a healer." The wheels are turning in his head, I know it.

"Aaah....so you have taken a personal interest in this one." That voice was too close to his lecture voice. "Something must've caught your interest, for you to agree to be tied to this mess for so long so easily; but then, I guess it was just a matter of time before you found a kindred spirit dealing with murderers and criminals."

I favor him with a withering look. "Did you expect me to leave that original judgement standing? An execution would have been one thing, that was sadism."

He hunches forward in his chair, poking a finger in the air at me. "You're just annoyed because you'd wanted a shot at some of the people he killed yourself - you've tangled with connections of theirs on the waterfront district, correct?" My withering look narrows and intensifies. "As rarely as it happens, I agree with you - the original sentence was something a temple of Buddha should've been above. However, not everyone can stay above mortal law as you are, and noone escapes karma, not even you, Honored Genjo Sanzo." He adds my full title with a quiet, sarcastic slant to it.

"I'm not trying to."

"As long as you're aware of what path you're on." He nods slightly to that. "Well then, is there anything else you wanted to ask?"

I speak flatly, with a slight bow as I leave. "No thank you. That will be all."

I manage to catch most of the others on the council that have enough spite in them to have come up with something like that; within the space of the first part of the day, my title has been thrown back at me with every possible shade of derision they can manage, and if I weren't able to sense when they were lying, there would've been a runaround taking a week. Soon there's only one person from the trial left who'd consider something like that without prompting.

The door into the office room of the chambers of the head of the temple rattles against the wall as I brush it aside; he looks up, briefly startled.

"It was your idea." The door swings shut behind me with a swift click.

"Come again?" He gives me a shaded, blank look. "Is something wrong, Most Honored Genjo Sanzo?" Correction, there's one form of derision the others missed; the slight, chiding barb, as if the full title should be a reminder of something I've forgotten.

"That first judgement was your idea."

"Aaah, that." There's just a slint hint of exagerration to his moment of comprehension to betray that it's feigned; he knew what I was here for from the start. "Well, fasting and meditation of this form has often been the atonement for murder; usually it's more than merely a day for each death, so you see, it was actually cut shorter than the traditional form."

"The traditional form was never intended to be fatal."

"Forgive me for needing to adapt things slightly; there was nothing in the traditional records for genocide save outright execution, and we are not to shed blood." Undertones of venom in answer to my sharp edges.

"Ah, I see, it is preferable to kill by torture than just to kill. Your sense of mercy is astonishing."

He puts down his pen, losing even the badly faked veil of courtesy. "Is there something you wished to discuss, or were you just looking for an argument?"

"I merely wished to confirm who I need to be wary of; of course, I find this to have been a very redundant line of inquiry, as I already knew you were a spiteful, deceptive worm that only paid lip service to the ideals you're supposed to stand for, so I should've expected this."

"You are hardly one to speak of another who actually follows the Eightfold Path, being one that doesn't even bother to try."

"It doesn't matter how much you gild carrion - it's still rotten, only now you're lying about it."

There's a minute of boiling silence while we snarl at each other, then he stands resolutely. "I believe, that there is no more purpose to your presence here, Most Honored Genjo Sanzo." He seems unsure of whether he should be hissing or snapping my title, so settles for spitting each word.

"Quite right, I have better things to do than listen to your lies and hypocrisy." I stalk out, heading back for the basement.

That simplifies things, and answers who in the temple is against me on this one -

Pretty much everyone.

-----------------

As I get close to the basement, I can hear Goku sporadically yelling; "Go on, I don't hang around your door staring at it, so what're you doing? Hey, I heard that! Aren't you people supposed to not say bad things about others? You! Don't even start!" The monk in charge of the lower cells is sitting by the door with his head in his hands.

"Please tell me you're here to collect him?", the monk whimpers weakly.

"Oh, I don't know, he certainly seems to be making things here interesting."

He only cringes in response as I pass by.

There's a knot of acolytes hanging in the hallway at the spectacle that scatter at my footsteps on the stairs like carp at a thrown rock, disappearing into their cells. Goku's outraged ranting fades to a more worried agitation, as he's standing in the cracked-open doorway to the cell. "Sanzo, he's still not awake; when are we going to take him to a healer and get something to eat?"

"When he wakes up." I walk into the cell barely looking at Goku; if all the noise Goku was making didn't wake him up, maybe he's worse than I'd thought. He's still curled up where I'd left him, his back to the door; if he weren't breathing and trembling slightly, I'd have been worried he was dead. At least the tub of water is in one corner, soap, a towel, and a folded white robe on the rough table beside it. Goku slips in himself and closes the door, leaning in the frame.

He still doesn't wake up at a nudge to his shoulder. He doesn't look any better, and there's a good chance the light fever hasn't broken. The flecks of dried blood from his face are spreading over the thin pillow, one hand curled almost under his face where he's been scratching at it in his sleep, clawing at the fresh scabs through the bandage.

I reach down carefully, trying to tug his wrist through the blankets to shift his hand away from his face; he stirs with a faint grumble, still asleep, pulling it right back.

It's a small consolation that he's not picking at it enough to do damage, and that it's not conscious.

I back away to stand next to the door, leaning against the cold stone wall. The one candle on the table is burning down as we wait, making all the shadows flicker on the walls dimly; the room's washed out to greys. Goku's mountain cage was a less depressing prison.

Five minutes pass, then ten, then a few hours of watching for any sign that he might be getting worse, before he finally starts stirring more than simple murmuring at nightmares; sitting up limply, back to me, attention blankly focused on his hand and the dried blood on it, unaware of me or Goku. His clothes are still stiff with older blood, almost stained to black in places. He shifts with an odd tilt to his head, then itches at his eyes absently.

My tongue tries to stick in my throat briefly; I point to the tub, one word crawling out of a combined need to distract him from his self-destruction before the eye gets any worse, get him cleaned and out of the bloody old clothes, and get him to the healer. "Strip!" He starts, realizing we're there with a fast backward glance. "Wash." I point to the tub and other things brought in to spare him the semi-public baths, trying to untangle a few nerves enough for full sentences.

He slinks painfully off the cot, shedding the old clothes in a rumpled, stiffened heap in the center of the room. His shadow flickers and twists on the wall in the guttering candlelight, warping in the darkness. Besides the bandages on his stomach and eye, he seems mostly unhurt; any other injuries he'd had must've healed cleanly. To've fought through two entire clans of youkai close-quarters and come out of it with that little in the way of serious injury - what did he do for a living before this? He doesn't act or carry himself like he's used to fighting without being pushed. He's still shaking and unsteady, distant, only barely more aware than he was on the walk back. It's likely that the disorientation is more because of his injuries than anything else; I don't dare take any more time getting him to a healer. Anyone getting in the way once we leave this room, is going to end up in pain.

He dresses shakily, still moving like it takes an act of effort to keep any kind of coordination. The white acolyte's robes hang oddly off his frame, awkward and incongruous. "Come on." When I turn to leave, he follows haltingly, Goku falling in behind me and just in front of him. Goku starts rambling as we're walking, a steady stream of "Hey, Sanzo, where are we going? Are we going into town? Will you buy me something to eat? You made me miss breakfast, so you'd better make up for it! You should remember to eat something too, y'know…" My now-nameless charge is actually showing signs of acknowledging our presence, but still seems dazed and distant. The other monks and acolytes giving us a wide berth; I keep catching myself moving faster than what he can manage with his injuries, and needing to stop and wait - as much as I want to get him to the healer and get away from the temple for a while, making him keep my usual pace in his condition will only make things worse.

One of the monks guarding the gate moves halfway into my path, torn between the confused realization that my charge isn't supposed to be leaving, and fear of me - he was one of the students involved in the fiasco a few months ago where I got "strongly suggested away" (in other words, banned) from watching the martial-arts classes.

"I was told, Most Honored Sanzo, that he wasn't to leave temple grounds..." He's holding still, but it's less standing his ground and more trying to not make any sudden moves around something dangerous, even though I'm looking up at him.

"He's badly injured and technically needed to see a healer yesterday. I'm not about to trouble a busy chi-healer that doubtless has other patients to attend to by forcing them to drop everything and run to the temple." If he makes me actually say 'stand aside', he's not going to be standing.

He frets it over; I've left him with a choice between risking getting in trouble with the other temple authorities, and the more immediate threat of getting in trouble with me when I'm in a foul mood. It only takes a couple seconds for him to decide, then he edges out of our way. "Understood, Honored Sanzo." The honorific isn't said so much with a sense of respect as, 'if I follow the rules of courtesy maybe he won't hurt me'.

Chang'An is a large and noisy city once outside the temple gates, split between squares and main roads with the spaces between filled with large buildings and narrow, winding streets. The nearest chi-healer that I know and trust is off the main thoroughfares, somewhere more the direction of the waterfront but still in the safer areas of town; someone less familiar with the city would get lost in two turns, but it's become a path I could almost follow blindfolded.

The healer's shop is small, worn, and about on par with the area around it; away from the main streets and busy districts, where the lower classes most in need of a good healer who doesn't need tools tend to congregate, and there isn't as much need to keep up appearances. I stand just inside the doorway while the other two wait outside; the old healer's already waiting, and had probably sensed me coming.

"This is a bit of a surprise, Sanzo. I hadn't even heard you were back in town…and usually, when you come here with someone, it's because they're carrying you." The last part of it was a very intentional, but relatively gentle prod, a not-openly-stated repeat of his old admonishment for me to try and keep myself in one piece more.

"He's hurt - badly."

"Not very hard to see…what, exactly, happened?"

"A long story not worth repeating."

"…One of those cases, hmm? Would this relate to your recent trip out of town?"

"I have no reason to explain." I might trust him, but this is far too close to the waterfront, my ward has far too much of a reputation, and if anyone overhears in the slightest -

I hand him coins, enough to easily cover something this severe, and another signal that the discussion was over.

The doctor can handle things, I just need to wait, avoid attracting attention, and make sure the patient stays put - a couple wrong turns from here and he might run straight into some old friends of Hyakugan Maoh's.

Goku's a few feet away, staring at a bakery a couple doors down as if it were an oasis in the desert - I know this's longer than he usually goes, but can he get a little patience to make sure this guy survives?

"Goku!" He hesitates, turning back reluctantly, already knowing he's not done yet. "Stay here and make sure he-" I point back at my ward -"doesn't go anywhere until the old man's done with him. Then bring him along, and come find me." If I just hang around, I'm going to attract attention, and questions, quite possibly of the kind I really don't need right now. Goku's one of the people that's carried me here before, he knows why I'd be cautious of saying much here.

He nods and stands by the door soberly, guarding, while the doctor waves my ward in. Goku can handle anything that might go wrong here; I turn down the street, to get out of sight and maybe hear what I might need to watch out for outside the temple.

There's a small bar around a few side streets, closer to the temple - close enough to it to be safe, but in the city enough to hear about the other places. It's a narrow, spare place wedged in between two other buildings, and a common enough retreat of mine that nobody looks twice at me entrance; it's counted with the temples as "mine" to the waterfront bosses, after I got drug into a squabble here. There's only a few people, old regulars, besides the staff, and nobody comments as I drift back to my regular table in a back corner near the bar.

The owner brings over a bottle of brandy and hands a glass down to me, leaning on the bar so that he could easily feign indifference. "Back in town already?"

"Trip didn't take real long." The pack's still in the pocket with my lighter - they haven't managed to make my cigarettes disappear yet. "Did I miss much?"

"Not really. The waterfront crowd's in a tizzy, but the Temples dealt with the only target they could aim at, so all their confusion's sorting out internal politics." I go through the first glass, and he hands me a second without blinking. "They're nervous, I will say that - I think it's sinking in that they just lost major backup, and they're the kind of nervous that makes them more dangerous than usual." Polishing off the second glass, some of the nervous-sick that's been a perpetual state loosens its grip. "I wouldn't recommend showing yourself around them for a while; they're looking for targets, and they don't like you even if you did just do their work for them." He hands down a third glass.

"Shouldn't be a problem; I'm going to be too busy to get in their hair for a good while. I ended up getting stuck with a new acolyte on the trip, and this one's going to take up all my time." Everything I said was true; it's the parts I left out that'll hopefully stave off too many questions from the wrong quarters about a certain new responsibility. "Might not even be able to make it out here much." I don't have to feign disappointment at that; part of the reason I've kept the organized crime types out of this area so vehemently, is that this place's close enough and discreet enough that I can get a drink here and there while I'm staying at the temple without it turning into a major debacle every time.

Things trail off into quiet, nothing but the usual background noise as people are filtering in and out; just keeping an eye on things and handing me a glass now and then without paying much attention to me is practically an old ritual for the bartender. Somehow, places like this feel more calm than the temple, for all that it's noisy, dimly lit, and replaces incense with smoke. I've been here often enough that most of the patrons don't pay any attention to my presence; I can fade into the background with my drink and my cigarette without any prickle of disapproving looks or people watching me just because I have a title and a relic draped over my shoulders. It's gotten worse since I brought him back, to boot; the Temple's feeling almost as much like enemy territory as some waterfront boss's home, just because I altered the ruling in favor of sparing Gonou's life.

It's hard to miss when they catch up; the murmur's punctuated briefly as the few others there notice Goku coming in accompanied, I'm sitting where I can see the door, and even avoiding paying attention it's hard to miss Goku's too-bright aura and the irked sort of surprise from behind him.

He still seems frail, but less distant, steadier on his feet; less a ghost trailing behind, disjointed from his surroundings. His right eye is tracking with the left, but there's now a silver-framed monocle perched on his nose, reflecting the flickering lanterns.

Goku's swiftly leaning on one of the chairs across the table from me, going complete begging puppy. "Hey, Sanzo, can I eat now?" The expression of utter pleading promises that if I come up with one more delay, I'm going to get whined at for hours, but there's not really anything else I need him for. I toss him the rest of what I had left from the travel money.

"Here, go buy something to eat. Meet me back at the temple later."

He clutches it with a grateful grin and bolts out happily, leaving my ward in his wake, still giving me and the empty glasses that bewildered look. I get up, ignoring it, and head out, followed by the continued confusion.

"Doc give you that for your eye?" I try to keep it offhand - it can only really mean that the eye didn't heal right or completely for some reason; I've never known that healer to leave scars, even with delicate damage like eye injuries.

His answer's thick with barbed sarcasm that stings all the harder for coming from him behind me, dragging part of my stomach right back into my throat. "Yes, Honored Genjo Sanzo."

I almost miss a step reacting. "Don't call me that!" Take a breath and turn enough to look at him, I have enough to fret over without this... "Just 'Sanzo' if you must call me anything at all." Damnit, he can ignore me if he wants, but if I have to face that attitude from him when I'm digging my own grave defending him, it'll be more than I can handle.

He's silent for a moment, whatever train of thought he'd had thrown off, and at first he's just starting to mouth words without quite seeming to know what he's trying to say. "....Er....alright....Sanzo."

"That's better." Confused I can live with, at least for now.

We make it back to the temple without incident, and the guard opens the gate before I even say anything. The trees are casting shadows almost to the far end of the main courtyard - the sun's going down; it's later than I'd thought. Now that he's coherent enough to be aware of his surroundings, I make the rounds of the temple rattling off where everything is, in the hopes that he catches enough to get around on his own when I'm not there. He doesn't even try to comment until the end, when I stop outside the kitchen. "...and that's the kitchen. You missed dinner, so if you need to eat, you can grab something here."

"Dinner?" He looks more dumbfounded than when I told him to drop the title. "But....I thought it was morning...."

The sun's been dipping lower as we've been circling the temple, and it's not just called "The Temple of the Setting Sun" for show - the courtyard faces west; it's hard to miss sunset here. Is he that disoriented still? "It's close to sundown."

"I see." Lost and dazed; like sundown threw off whatever grasp he was starting to have of things. "I'll take my leave then." He bows, turns, and heads off into the main complex.

I'd stopped at the kitchen because I'd intended to finally catch something to eat, but now that I'm faced with it, I'm not sure I feel up to keeping anything down again; I'm still staring at the door debating when Goku catches up.

"Sanzo!" He looks around, peering around the doors. "He go to bed or something?"

"Something like that." I shrug; it's not like I need to keep track of where he is every moment, so long as noone harasses him. It doesn't seem like there's much risk of him getting into trouble.

"Already? He practically slept all day...did he get anything to eat?"

"He knows where the food is."

Now he's in front of me, giving me the poking, studying look. "Did you get anything to eat?"

"I came here for dinner almost half an hour ago." It's not a lie, that is why I came to the kitchen, and I think that's about when we got here.

He almost doesn't let me off the hook on it, but doesn't question any further. "Alright, I'll be around." He dashes off outside.

The baths are empty, which is nice, since I don't really feel like the usual hassle that goes with getting a private bath; after that I head back to my room, after sunset.

On opening the door, I'm immediately greeted by what usually happens to a closed-in, unventilated room during the hottest part of summer in avwarm, coastal area - it turns into a sauna and stays that way. I shut the door, fold the sutra, and get out of the thick cotton outer robe before facing the broken window-shutter.

The metal shutter folds up lengthwise along the large window; I usually only close it when I'm not staying here, since rain only gets in when the wind is blowing it horizontal. It wouldn't be such a pain if Goku hadn't broken it getting into the room from the outside when I'd first brought him here; I was too frazzled last night to care, but it's getting to be too much.

I have to kneel on the bed to deal with it; the latches flip open easily enough - they were replaced, being inside and easy to get to without a three-story drop. The rest takes bracing against the bed and struggling with the handle while holding the left hinge together.

It starts to give, then the hinge starts catching my hand, cutting into it; my grip on the handle slips at the same time as the covers on the bed, and the next thing I know, stars are clearing out of my vision from cracking my head on the floor, and I'm sprawled half off the bed having gained three inches open on the window.

I'm seriously considering giving up on it when Goku sticks his head in the door. "Sanzo! What happened, are you alright?"

I give him the level best "Go hang yourself and die" look I can achieve while seeing him upside down. "You broke it, you get the damn thing open."

He slinks behind the door with a nervous, "Oh...eheh...", then sidles in and shuts it behind himself.

He gets it open by bracing not on the bed, but on the wall beside it; it screeches open while I'm sitting up rubbing where I hit my head absently. The nick the hinge gave me on the hand is a papercut-thin line of red on the side of my hand; it won't even be visible by mirning, probably. The breeze that comes in is a welcome change from the stifling humidity.

Goku perches on the edge of the bed next to me. "It's not that hard to open, even if the hinges are a little funny -" He cuts off at the sideways glare that gets. "I'll go to bed then, if you're alright..." He hops off and leaves.

I fall back on the bed, not bothering with my underclothes or picking up the blanket; it's not like I need it tonight. The one thing that keeps me from just passing out is the paranoid reflex, to sit back up, cross the room, and move the folded sutra and my gun to rest under the pillow, then just collapse into the bed. Still, I find myself staring out the window at the cloudless sky for a while. I seem to've outdone myself on turning the temple against me, and not even by doing anything worse than, for once, holding them to their own teachings. I don't have the slightest clue what the now-nameless Gonou is supposed to do when his time here is up; from how I found him,it looks like any life he had to go back to is gone, assuming I could send him back without the crime lords hunting him down. The one time I got a coherent reaction from him besides disorientation, it was sarcasm and scorn, and it's entirely likely that's what I'll be looking at for a while; between him, the criminal element, and the temple, I'm the only one that wants him to live, and I'm not sure if making him live at this point even counts as mercy.


	5. Rapids Thaw

This marks a rare occasion - this chapter ends in about the same place in "time/events" as Here Lies Gonou. Isil's comment was, "...it'll never happen again, you realize."

A tab key, and access to more than three of the punctuation marks on the keyboard, that's all I ask...I know the older builds of this program had them, and put them BACK once after much griping, so why the fuck did they remove them again?

* * *

I wake up to someone banging on my door; the stars are still out, the moon's set, and there's no sign of sunlight yet, so it's somewhere around three. Fucking. AM.

"Honored Sanzo?" It's not Goku, it's one of the monks; I shouldn't shoot at the door to make them go away, but it's tempting anyway. He bangs on the door again, and I drag myself sitting up, trying to will a horrible death through the closed door. "Most Honored Sanzo...?"

He starts knocking again while I'm crossing the room. "Give me a minute!"

"There's something you need to attend to, most honored Sanzo." , he whines; Patience, they preach - patience my ass.

I crack the door, leaning on it; his impatient fretting flags when he sees the snarl he's getting. "Whatever it is, it can wait until morning." I start to shut the door; he catches it, wincing as it closes on his hand.

"Please, Honored Sanzo, this needs to be dealt with!" He's determined to not go away short of me shooting him, and he's not worth waking up a healer this late for.

"If it's that important, it can wait until I'm dressed!" I glare at him until he pulls his hand out of the door to wait. I could decide that "when I'm dressed" means "when I get up in the morning and get dressed", and just go back to bed, but he'd probably just keep banging at my door until I humor him. I pull on my outer robe, put my gun in the holster hidden in the sleeve, and take the time to make sure the sutra's draped neatly over my shoulders, the monk at the door getting more irritated with every second I take.

His resolve on getting my attention staggers again when I storm out and pull my door shut, but he doesn't budge beyond a nervous swallow.

"Well? What is it?"

"Your acolyte. This way - the Great Hall." He starts walking like it's a foregone conclusion that I'm going to follow him, with no intention of answering me until he's shown me whatever he's upset about; if "my acolyte" is actually starting trouble, he's toast, but if this is just some over-reacting twitch, I'm going to take the monk's head off. He moves briskly down the stairs to the Great Hall, where the candles are lit, and "my acolyte" is kneeling on one of the cushions in complete silence in front of the Buddha statue.

"You see, Honored Genjo Sanzo? There he is!" The monk's dead meat.

"I see him. What about it?"

"He is...he is..." The monk - younger than me - is speaking as if he's doing something too horrible to contemplate.

"I am meditating on the lives that ended because of my actions. Isn't that what I'm supposed to be doing?" He didn't even move to look away from the candles and the statue, his voice quiet, worn out, sardonic. The monk just points as if somehow, it should all be clear to me how awful this is, giving me an expectant look.

"Well? Doesn't look like there's a problem. What'd you wake me up for?" And pick your reasons well if you like breathing.

"But Genjo Sanzo...perhaps he should find some other place to meditate?" I should've remembered, any reminder that anything outside their nice narrow little bubble exists is far too much of an offense to their delicate sensibilities.

"Why, what's wrong with here? This is where everyone else comes to meditate, isn't it?" You're the one that called him an acolyte, you're barely out of an acolyte's robes, what the Hell is wrong with you?

"But it's disgraceful!", he blurts, as if he can't wrap his head around why I don't see this as some terrible transgression.

"What's disgraceful about it?" One more 'but this should be self-evident' answer and he's getting a fan upside the head, and should count himself lucky it's not a gunshot.

"It's unseemly that such violent thoughts should be brought into the Buddha's presence!" Violent. Thoughts. He's upset about violent thoughts so he -woke ME up at 3 fucking am-! Who does he think he's talking to? I open my mouth, to excuse both myself and my ward - if he doesn't want violent thoughts in the temple, I'll just remove myself -

"My apologies. I will remove my unworthy thoughts from the Buddha's presence." He barely succeeds at keeping it flat, just enough to make it hard to tell if he's sarcastic or serious, annoyed or apologetic. He stands up from the cushion, does a small, stiff formal bow, and walks out.

The candles flicker in silence with both of us staring off the way he just went, then the monk looks to me for some clarification of what just happened. I keep my entire response to straightening over him and glowering at him until he shrinks down and slinks out, glancing back to me for some answer on what he just did wrong.

If this is how things are going to go, I'm going to be nuts before the month is out.

* * *

I spend a good twenty minutes, half an hour maybe, first staring at the ceiling, then out at the cloudless night sky. Sleep's not coming, as much as I'd like to get back to it; I get up, get dressed again, and leave my room, listening to the too-quiet of the temple at night and looking for where this newest nameless, faceless gnawing is coming from.

I find myself in the great hall almost before I've realized I'm there; it's empty now, the candles've all been put out, washing everything to shades of grey and shadow. For all the fuss that monk made, nothing's come of it but an empty hall; the building creaks and settles with the sound of a breeze, and if I were to tell someone who'd never seen it in daylight that it was haunted and long-abandoned, I don't think they'd argue. The wind whistles around it as if it were deserted, and the sheer emptiness of it starts gnawing, threatening to bring up a few other entries in my list of old bad memories; I walk outside before it gets the chance, to the equally empty courtyard, the night breeze off the ocean chilled. There's a few lights still burning in the city, as always; the night-shift gate guard gives enough acknowledgement for propriety as I head out, practically one of the statues himself.

Once I'm down the temple steps, I light a cigarette, and just let rote guide me on a practiced path through this area of the city; the shops are closed, the bars even've been closed for a while, the gaslight streetlamps are only sporadically on, there's voices here and there but no-one on the road visibly. My own footsteps on the cobblestone are enough to obscure anything overheard to where it can't be understood. All I need to do is pin down what's eating at the back of my mind; watch the paving stones go by until something comes forward.

I wouldn't even be awake now if not for that stupid monk getting a burr up his ass and deciding that piety was more important than patience. Koumyou used to find it oddly amusing that two of the more important symbols in Buddhism were a jewel and a lotus, yet it was often left to footnote in the temple that jewels had to be dug out of the dirt and lotuses grew from swamp muck. The joke, he said, was that in striving for purity, everyone tries to find the flower by killing the roots. I wonder if the monk caught that the only one in that room that wasn't being openly hostile, was the one he was so upset about finding meditating in the great hall.

Meditating on his sins...like it'll accomplish anything like this. Nothing will change what happened; certainly not kneeling in front of a statue dredging the past like fishing bloated corpses out of a lake. If the dark spiral I touched that first time I checked on him in the cell was any indication, he doesn't need any help turning inward on himself; it was like sticking my hand into one of the old hell-paintings of the centipede devouring itself, but I'm short on options to distract that with how the judgement ended up.

I was too tired, too cranky, too habitually closed-off to've picked anything up when he decided to leave the great hall; too tired and dumbfounded at his cutting me off to've stopped him. He went from the sarcasm and derision of earlier to ...was that seeking a compromise, annoyance at our argument, or self-reproach? I wasn't watching, and I'm not sure watching would've told me much even if I had been paying attention. It wasn't what I had expected to happen...but then, how much do I really have to build an idea on?

Can't walk on the rapids when the river thaws.

I come to a square with a fountain, four dragons rising from the center spouting water; sit on the edge absently, ignoring the occasional fleck of water from the center spray. I have no clue, really, what I'm dealing with, beyond some sketchy observations. Most of the time I've known him so far, has been while he was too wounded and disoriented to even really be aware of his surroundings. Even the aura-bits I read while he was out of it are likely affected by the injuries; I can't rely on that now that he's intact. Scratch out everything from his suicide attempt in the ruins to when he arrived at the doctor's until I have more to build on to look at it from; it won't help me. What else do I have? Before the ruins, there's what I saw of his actions, and what Gojyo said; the former's still sketchy and more seeing winter-ice than water beneath, the latter's suspect because I know Gojyo omitted quite a bit in mistrust. After he came out of the doctors - a sarcastic jab my direction, and a lot of bewildered following me around absorbing information, then the little display in the Great Hall. Not enough to get a clear picture, or do more than confuse myself with speculation until I have something more to add to the picture.

Cho Gonou may be dead and in many ways a new creature, but who and what ever walks out of this temple at the end of this, will have come from those roots. It's almost dead certain that I'm not going to get a clear picture of what I'm dealing with now until I have some idea of who he was, then enough time to get a more solid idea of his reactions now.

I start walking back, the streets still empty. I don't know what I'm getting into, but I'm eyeball deep in it, and the rest of the temple won't be any help; something familiar's creeping up -

Responsibility. Not just short-term, dealing with a specific job or event and moving on; I've set myself up as being responsible for him, and while there's technically a timetable to it, he has nothing to go back to really, and I'm not going to carelessly ditch him to that when this is over. It may not be on the magnitude of what I took on when I brought Goku off the mountain, but I've still made myself personally, legally, and officially responsible for him and what becomes of him, and I'm not sure I have the slightest clue what I'm doing.

I barely remember to get rid of the burned-down remains of my cigarette before I reach the gate, the sky lightening behind me; the guard lets me in without any comment. Putting names to the nervous frets hasn't quelled them entirely; instead of heading for my room, I cut through the Great Hall, and check the smaller meditation halls in the acolyte's wing. A few of the normal acolytes are either up early or having their own bouts of insomnia; I get a few glances in passing, but there's no sign of my ward. I check his cell, in case he went to bed; there's no sign of him there either. The kitchen's empty, so he isn't taking time to eat; I start making the rounds of the gardens, since people will often head to them in better weather. I start worrying as I continue to find nothing. I didn't leave that long, the gate guard would've stopped him if he'd tried to leave by himself and didn't seem to've had anything happen, so he shouldn't have left, unless he found some way out that isn't watched - entirely possible. If he got out of the temple, with local politics...He's got nowhere to go, I hope he wouldn't be that stupid.

Another circle of the courtyards and gardens, people are starting to move around and the sun's rising, I'm not hearing any word of him from anyone wandering around or seeing him in passing either. I end up stopped under my own window, in the north courtyard, in front of the lotus pond with the one gnarled water-tree in full bloom. I lean back on the wall, rubbing the bridge of my nose, the air seeming three times thicker. There's got to be some way to figure out where he is, to tell if something happened, and it strikes me how much could've happened - I'm dealing with someone with demonstrated suicidal tendencies that a good chunk of this area wants dead. If someone hasn't seen him, then he must've gone somewhere out of sight, if he's not in the temple then he either slipped past the front gate guard, or found a way out that wasn't guarded; I'm not aware of any, but this's a large and old enough building that there's probably some we don't know about. If he is here, then he's somewhere that someone wouldn't have seen him, like an unused room, or some little niche in the gardens; that leaves…a horribly huge amount of ground to cover, without much in the way of clues to go on.

When I start checking attic-rooms and lesser-used places in the north wing, I end up passing Goku on his way to wake me up for breakfast. The first "Sanzo?" almost doesn't register as I'm checking doors; most of the rooms around mine aren't used unless there's someone important visiting, and he just watches me quizzically while I'm systematically opening doors. "Sanzo? Did you lose something?"

I turn to him. "Where's -", and lapse into a few empty gestures for lack of any name to use; he gets it anyway, and shrugs.

"Haven't seen him - shouldn't he be in his room or something like that?"

"Not there, some moron was hassling him last night." I start checking doors again.

"Ehh...so you think he's hiding somewhere?" He brushes his hair back uncertainly. "Geez, there's tons of places to hide around here that nobody ever bothers with."

My reply's a curt "Hrph." and a shoulder-hunch.

"Sooo should I get breakfast for you and leave it in your room or something?"

"Don't bother; I'll get something when I've found him."

I can feel the bewildered, almost-frustrated look - the 'gauging whether or not I need pestering to remember to eat' look, then he just wishes me luck and runs off toward the kitchens.

The morning wears on to a lot of quizzical looks and empty rooms until I've covered not only the entire main temple complex, but the annex buildings as well; he's not indoors, unless he's gone somewhere behind me, and more than one priest gets stopped with a "Where's -?" or "Have you seen -?" long enough for me to get an "I don't know, Honored Sanzo" or a "No, Honored Sanzo" or a shrug and a look like I've lost my mind - so wherever he is, he probably hasn't passed through anywhere he'd be visible.

The gardens are designed to encourage quiet solitude; normally I'd be grateful for the way it's organized into hundreds of nooks, crannys, small vales, and hidden sitting-spots that all tend to shift over time depending on individual plants and the groundskeeper's whims, now it's just frustrating, and makes checking the main gardens take forever. I end up running into Goku again, on one of his usual routines of exploring the gardens; after my growl and glower at "...still haven't found him?", he volunteers to let me know if he finds anything, and peels off a different direction.

There's no sign of him in any of the larger gardens, which leaves some of the smaller courtyards and lesser gardens in niches around annexes, smaller shrines, and between buildings or in corners - the ones that you practically have to stumble across to know about, and if he's in one of those, then I don't need a panic attack. I head off blowing past before anyone can even attempt to get my attention if they're not bringing up where he is, ticking over what I know of the place to find every one of the little nook and cranny gardens that I can. Half of them are overgrown and near-forgotten, beyond the scope of the groundkeeper and his assistants to keep up with more than sporadically.

I finally find him curled up asleep in a thorn-overgrown garden in a cul-de-sac of some of the back halls, the sun close to straight overhead; there's a small, run down shrine being slowly swallowed by the vines, escapees from a trellis in another garden; the things carpet whatever they cover in white flowers for a while in spring, and otherwise are mostly just fast-growing clinging carpets of jagged sharp edges. He's asleep in front of the shrine, sitting up with the special slump from nodding off kneeling in meditation that usually gets younger acolytes in trouble; it's more than likely that he's been out here pretty much since he left the main hall.

I nudge his shoulder; he wakes with a start, twisting around to blink at me in surprise.

"So this is where you've been."

He settles back to facing the shrine. "Its run-down imperfection is more suitable for a detestable sinner like me." It's the same flat voice as last night, but whether the self-deprecating warp was there so strongly last night or not I'm not sure.

"You didn't have to leave the main temple, you know." I shift my gaze to the side, to the ground-runners of the thorns.

"I dodn't want my actions to reflect badly upon you." Reflect badly? Him? "I'm supposed to be showing you the proper respect. After all, you're responsible for my actions." There's that sardonic, derisive lilt again.

With my reputation - if he knew that my usual reaction to running across an acolyte falling asleep like this, is a gunshot straight up right behind them..."You're hardly going to affect my reputation." I've been around this temple enough that I know my reputation's a joke; I'm tolerated because I can't be removed from my position.

He laughs bitterly, quietly. "I'm a sinner and an abomination. You're the holy Genjo Sanzo. How am I not going to be a stain on your reputation?" The dark twist is directed more inward, though it's hard to tell through the thick, erosive tone. I'm still in the "holy" category somehow - I think I'd prefer that spiral aimed at me, at least then I'd have some sense that he still had some will to keep living without me standing over him.

"Feh. About as holy as..." The dark mutter's directed more at myself than a part of the conversation.

He picks up quickly, the bleak tone of voice gaining sharp edges, dark cloud putting claws outward - "Not that you should care whether your fellow monks like me or not; I'm just alive so that I can suffer, right?" He turns suddenly with a cold, vengeful glare, all the sharp bits in his aura suddenly pointed my way in accusation. "Isn't that why you spared my life?" The spiral's all mine for the moment, but...hatred for wanting him to live... Undercuts everything, deeper than I'd expected, dragging back to the fear that what I'm asking of him is no more than petty selfishness turned to cruelty, and I don't have any answers for that trapped outrage; a weak "No..." scrapes out my throat.

A moment of confusion trips up the sharp edges; he lowers his voice. "There's no other reason for me to be alive."

Why did I save him, argue so vehemently to keep him alive? "I couldn't leave you like that."

"It's what I wanted." It's too quick to be a simple statement, too almost-flinching and weakened to be a snap; a weak echo of frustrated despair and a plea for explanation.

I don't really have anything I can say, to give him a reason to live besides my stubborn sense of responsibility.

The black spiral settles back around him even though that look, that haunted plea, doesn't shift; then the noon bell starts tolling, breaking up the silence.


	6. Lost in Translation

It's now spring break! YAAAAAAY! (well, as of earlier today) - and as for that thing, with the chapter breaks matching Gonou? …Yeah, don't count on that happening too often. I've resigned myself to the annoying weirding of punctuation, too.

* * *

He drifts behind me silently to the commons hall in the central temple; I keep my eyes straight ahead, trying not to let the number of pricks of contempt aimed our direction claw too much at raw nerves freshly pulled to the surface. If anything's going to get my composure to crack, it's not going to be these assholes. 

I take a plate and stare down at it dubiously while he's getting his; the mere presence of food is bringing up pangs of nausea, and I'm probably not going to get anything much down until either the frayed nerves unknot, or I get something to settle it, and I'm not sure how long it'll be until I can get a drink.

"Don't bother looking for a place to sit. We're not staying." If the prevailing mood is enough to bother me, then it's definitely worth making this a 'we'; he's sneaking glances around, then looking away at each accusing look. The overseeing priest pointedly looks from my plate, to his, to him, a rather obvious gesture with a sharp look of command.

"Then where shall I carry your plate?", he asks, shuffling his own plate to hold a free hand out for mine.

I give the priest a glower - they're trying to turn him into a servant already - and hand it to him, not wanting to start a scene here right now. "Whatever."

I stalk out, taking side paths that're less inhabited until I reach the north yard by the pond, the branches of the ornamental tree shading off some of the noonday sun. He hands me back my plate as soon as I sit down, then bows and turns to leave.

"Where are you going?"

"I thought I'd return to my cell. Isn't that what would be proper?" There's a definite barb of sarcasm as he looks back at me.

"'Proper' is not exactly a concern of mine." The offending word gets a sarcastic snarl, just a word used as an excuse when someone wants to justify being a pain in the ass without admitting it.

"I wouldn't want to disturb your meal." He's reaching the level of backhanded imperiousness I usually reserve for the head of the temple.

This is gonna be a real fun three years or so. "You're not disturbing anything." I probably shouldn't be taking the bait of his attitude like this, but I find myself in a staredown regardless, like a pair of unfamiliar wolves waiting for one or the other to do something. Then, he bows, stiff and forced. "As you wish, Sanzo." No, not the same backhanded maliciousness I give the temple-head; he somehow manages to be utterly snide and cutting and vaguely indirect at the same time. He sits down almost at the far corner of the pond, facing it. At first I catch his gaze flickering again, as if checking that I'm still watching him sidelong, then he pointedly focuses on his plate as if I'm not even there. He stares at it uncertainly, then starts picking at it, grudgingly.

I stare at mine, cooling, and try to remind my stomach that technically I do need food, as much as it may think otherwise; a few bites and it's even knotting on cool rice, threatening open revolt and rebellion. I'm just going to have to wait and eat later. He's still ignoring me; there's nobody else around, and it idly occurs to me that I have no clue if Goku might still be looking for him, or how to let the monkey know that he can stop without tearing the temple apart a second time today. Eh; he probably beat us to lunch, and knowing how many random rooms and gardens he's been chased out of for various reasons, he's probably going to use the excuse of "I'm on an errand for Sanzo" for all it's worth.

He gets up and starts to leave.

"Where are you going?" He stops and looks back at me oddly, and I start backpedaling; I'm not going to hover around him constantly. "Not that I care to follow you, but I want to know where to look if they decide they need to know where you are again."

There's a split-second confused falter before the attitude returns with a flat chill. "I'm returning my plate. Shall I take yours back as well?"

I spare it a glance; it's almost full, but if I eat any more, I'll just be making myself sick. "May as well.", I mumble, and hold it out to him.

He almost leaves, but stops just short of the arch separating the pond's courtyard from the north edge of the main yard. "If my presence won't sully the books too badly, I might look at the library." The casual sarcasm's veiling something - but it seems that he's turned the bitterness inward again. I'm not sure how much of it is asking permission.

"Go ahead." It's not like I've limited his movements here before.

He leaves without any further reaction.

The north courtyard remains empty and quiet; it's a narrow strip between the main yard and some little-used back gardens, where few people pass except the groundskeeper. The librarian won't bother him unless he goes out of his way to annoy the old man, won't brook someone else bothering him; if he's spending time in the library, I don't need to worry about him. The quiet, without even another presence to mind except an occasional flicker of koi under the lotus-leaves or anything I need to worry about elsewhere, is a relief. With the temple being in the middle of Chang'An, the only places with any real solitude are the less visited gardens like this, the streets at three am, or a good hour's walk out of town.

So I've got what I'm doing for however long this takes set; all I have to do, is keep him in one piece. And try to keep the other priests from harassing him too much. And keep the Waterfront District crowd from realizing he's not dead. And try not to let his attitude when he's lashing out drive me too nuts. And try not to let the inward-spiral drive me too nuts dealing with it. Oh, and on that note, keep him from self-destructing. And keep an eye on Goku while I'm at it. And put up with whatever 'duties of my position' the Temple higher-ups might push off on me. And keep all of that going until he seems capable of surviving and I can think of somewhere for him to go.

The groundskeeper comes in, feeding the fish and with tools to tend the pond; he does a bewildered double-take, then when I don't acknowledge his presence, he goes about his work, giving me odd glances while trying not to disturb me. Probably not a good idea to make a habit of sitting out here - Hell, just putting up with the reaction of the higher-ups to hearing that I was "out meditating" and "acting vaguely Sanzo-like" is going to be obnoxious enough, much less if I fall into a pattern where they know where I go for peace and quiet. The head of the temple expects this to last for almost three years; if they don't push him over the edge, they sure as Hell will me.

The groundskeeper finishes up there and moves on, leaving me alone again, trying to sort out what I've gotten myself into. Temple politics is a known equation; it's just going to be nastier than usual. The one big unknown variable remains the one I'm directly responsible for. If he continues reacting the way he has so far today, I'm looking at months or years of juggling porcupines, and I'm damned if I know how to defuse his attitude, toward me or himself.

Go over what I know - objective details - the Sanbutshin didn't tell me overly much. He'd killed around a thousand youkai in a few days. Neither clan was exactly pleasant - Hyakugan Maoh had terrorized his subjects besides his depredations on women, and the Dark Crow were flunkies for every crime lord and bloody-minded Maoh this side of the Great River. Knowledge of the motives is sketchy; he'd gone back to the ruins looking for a body - Kanan, Gojyo had said - almost definitely a victim of Hyakugan Maoh's. The attack could've been either a rescue that didn't work, or a very bloody streak of vengeance; possibly elements of both. He hadn't known how to handle a gun; that may not mean much, since guns aren't horribly common. If he'd had previous dealings with the criminal element, it wasn't in any respect I'd heard of; he didn't seem known around Gojyo's village save as "That guy Gojyo took in", so he's from somewhere else, either from another area in Hyakugan Maoh's territory, or traveling through. His reactions haven't been stable or predictable; river's thawing and I think I've gotten myself knee-deep in rapids already. I'm going to have to go through the temple library to check archives quietly; research into his background through normal avenues might draw attention from people I want believing he's literally dead.

"Hey Sanzo!" Goku's flouncing in from the side, dashing up to where I'm sitting. "Did you find him yet? I looked all over and I heard some of the monks muttering about him being in the library, and I'm not sure the librarian won't chase me out, but I thought you'd want to hear...Sanzo?"

"I found him earlier. He said he was going to the library."

"Oookay...so you're just sitting here?"

"Yes. It's peaceful and quiet here. Usually." I finally actually move, to give him a sharp look on the 'usually'.

He turns on his heel whistling, and walks off in a hurry, breaking into a run with a yell of "Okayseeyabye!"

Quiet settles back in after he's left except for an occasional flicker of fish under the lotus-leaves. The edges of the whole tangled dilemma are taking on a sort of dim fuzzy quality; things running in circles and grey areas until the mess of politics, bits of actions and events, and unknowns becomes a sort of fuzzed mush among the green leaves and splashes of fish-color, reweaving themselves somewhere just out of my reach, as if there's some pattern I'm just not seeing except in snatches; gold, white, green, and red, cobwebs and shadows.

Then there's movement to my right, something offered, and I start out of it; I'd managed to doze off without even realizing, last night's insomnia catching up. It's - he's just handed me a plate of food? The sun's dropped down I must've drowsed through the dinner bell. The fuzzy cobwebs are slow to go away, although a tentative attempt at eating finds food still unwelcome, and I give up on it; I'm not going to get anything down at this point without something to settle it, so I'll just have to sneak out when I get a chance and get a drink.

"Sanzo?" There's actual honest concern instead of the confrontational tone of earlier, and I catch myself blinking over at him blankly for a minute as it registers that he's looked between me and my full plate, while his is empty.

"I'm fine, I'm not hungry." A practiced mantra from the questions of others.

"You should eat more than that. You barely touched lunch." It's a controlled, gentle prod, leaving me lost in the lurch again at the sudden behavior-shift - so drop deciphering, and deal with what I'm faced with.

"I wasn't hungry then, either." If I'd been able to eat, I would've.

"What shall I tell them, then, when I bring your plate back still full?" The edge returns quickly once it shows itself. "That my presence turned your stomach?" Does he really think I'm that arrogant? No, no assumptions; the dark spiral in his aura's tangled, but undirected, looping at random - strangling inward just as much as lashing out.

_I'm a sinner and an abomination. How could I not be a stain on your reputation?_

_ If my presence won't sully the books too badly..._

_ The dark spiral in his cell, the hell-painting - centipede devouring itself..._

There hasn't been a single barb at me that hasn't been couched in an equal or worse barb at himself; any anger at him only acts to reinforce it. The almost-snap-in-response dies with a mental flicker of his assertion that I'd preserved him solely to suffer, and the wording I'd used in the trial - I'd fed the spiral-in well, said much to justify its existence. I drop my gaze back to the pond. "It has nothing to do with you. I've always been this way."

There's a moment of silence, then he suddenly leans over, scraping most of the food off my plate to his own - currents shifting again, and I look back to him, lost.

The accusing barb's retreated, back to a calm reassurance, the spiral warping to another intent - of taking whatever questions might've been directed at me; he looks down to shift the food so that it looks picked at instead of just dumped onto the plate. "If you keep that up, you'll put a hole in your stomach.", he almost whispers; the spiral's tangled into something else, shifting again, pulling apart and re-fusing; the only direction I can pick out is a conscious tug away from being directed at me. Honest concern earlier - taking the blame for my lack of appetite -

Damnit, I'm supposed to be the responsible one here; have I slipped that much? "I'll get sick anyway, if I eat this." I don't think I've commented on it since...since well before I found Goku.

"What should I bring you, next time?" He's talking more steadily, picking words carefully, no readable inflection.

How am I supposed to explain what most healers have been at a loss to comment on besides confirming 'that's all that works'? "A drink."

Very predictably, the quiet worry turns back into the barbed outward spiral, cold sarcasm and all. "Just one?"

"I wouldn't want to piss them off too much." Every time my eating habits come up, from the time I was thirteen and that toothless old coyote had hit on the only working solution half-accidentally, I've had to go through the disbelief, the questioning and derision, nevermind that I've been through every folk remedy and tested medicine on the bloody continent.

"And what sort of drink does my honored savior require?" There's the disgust coming in, right on schedule; the old 'that's a sorry excuse for drinking'.

"What ever you can sneak past the monks." I will not glare at him. I was going to avoid feeding his self-loathing any more, and will not allow something this trivial, worn, and stupid to get to me.

"And if I bring you food, will you eat it? Or will you just drink yourself sick?" Sarcasm's gone, the hostility's open; what options do I have if I'm not going to meet it? It's starting to become juggling broken glass - no sarcasm, no hostility.

"If I have something to drink, I'll eat." It almost surprises me, the flat defeat that's left.

The dark barbs roll back inward, as badly as if I had snapped back at him. He takes the plates and leaves wordlessly, and I'm left with the feeling that somewhere, I'd dropped one of those broken-glass bits I was juggling, and I'm not even sure what I did this time. I'd thought that not choking out the empathy in his case might help figure out what I was dealing with, but it's just driven home how treacherous the footing really is; no sooner do I start to get a handle on his mood than it shifts into something else. Some of the self-destructive patterns were there when I found him, I know that, but…the first time he'd lashed out at me, he'd brought up what I'd said during the trial, so I can't say it's not justified the times I've been included among its targets. The more I sit by the pond trying to think of something, the more I realize that I don't really have the slightest clue how to uncoil his inward spiral; reading intentions, moods, states of mind doesn't cover the reasoning behind it, it's just adding to the feeling that in some respects, I'm still a spectator on the sidelines of a wreck. The sun all but sets without any answer presenting itself, as the cobwebs start knitting thoughts together in patterns with a few more sharp edges.

"Sanzo?" I hadn't really been drowsing, but I still hadn't heard him enter the garden - he caught me by surprise; I catch the twitch too late, then stand up stiff.

"It's getting dark. You should go inside and get some sleep." He's back to the quiet, controlled concern.

I cover a yawn, and try to get blood back in my feet without wobbling on my way to the arch. He'd stayed up while I'd been asleep, and he's probably still recovering - how is he managing to comment on my sleeping habits? "You too."

He shadows me into the temple, then heads off toward the acolyte's wing; I must've lost more sleep than I thought over the last few days. I drop the outer robe on the floor, fold the sutra and my gun under the pillow, and drop off asleep on the bed.


	7. Blind Dogma

And the doom continues. Slight language and MUCH bitchy Sanzo. Pondering the pros and cons of murder bitchy, actually.

* * *

The next morning, I wake up to sunlight, a cool breeze off the oceans tempering the late-summer heat, and Goku banging on the door. "San-zoo!" 

I fold the pillow over my head, ignoring the revolver chamber that's jabbing my arm under the pillow. It doesn't help. "Sanzooo come on, it's time for breakfast!"

I growl, and sit up, staring at the far wall and the dresser for a minute. I have ten seconds to stand up before he starts yelling again, and I try to make the most of it; reach to move the blanket, then remember that I slept on top of it last night. It's too late in the morning for the baths to be quiet; I don't feel like going to the trouble of getting a bath brought in - it'd guarantee that whatever cigarettes I have stashed would vanish anyway - so I'm just going to have to deal with the main baths after breakfast.

I pick up my robe off the floor, get everything ready, and open the door to find Goku leaning on the wall waiting. He takes off staying a few feet ahead all the way to the kitchens, giving a running narration of what's different on the grounds lately, what birds are where, how run-in-circles he'd gotten by the monks for hanging around the martial arts classes, how-did-I-just-sit-still-all-day-like-that-had-I-fallen-asleep-or-something, and on, and on.

While Goku's eating, I hang off to the side with a piece of bread, picking at it without really eating; there's no sign of my charge anywhere, and noone seen him yet this morning. Goku catches up as I'm filtering around asking questions, offering with a shrug, "Maybe he's sleeping in?".

He gets ahead of me to the acolytes' cells, so at first I figure the low whispering is the usual disturbance caused by Goku's passage; then I get down the stairs to see him leaning in the open door. As I get close, he steps back out, scratching his head. "He's not here." When I reach the door, he continues, "It doesn't even look like his bed's been slept in or smell like he's been here for a while..."

Disappeared, again. There's almost a flutter of panic - did he find some new hiding-hole, or walk into something?

"Maybe he's sleeping outside somewhere - like I did when they stuck me down here until it rained and I sorta broke your shutters getting in? Though I don't think he'd climb up a tree like I did, at least, he shouldn't if he's still healing...Hey, where'd you find him last time?"

Trust the monkey's thinking out loud to keep things simple. "Back garden - we'll check there first."

As we're walking out, he starts up again, disrupting any attempt at thinking much. "I get it - you're worried about him 'cuz he might still be sick, or that he might hurt himself again, right?" I suppress a flinch; the moron's not psychic, but he's damn good at tripping over things.

"I'm supposed to be responsible for him. That's all." I give the last word the stress of finality. He turns walking almost backwards long enough to give me a look where I can't decipher if it's worried about me, worried about him, or just answering my blow-off with a disbelieving 'yeah, sure, whatever'.

He turns back to facing forward, crossing his arms behind his head. "If you're worried about him, you should just say so."

I glare aside at a candleholder, keeping the reaction to an annoyed, "tch."

"Well, on the bright side," he offers, dropping the needling, "if he is sleeping outside, at least it's not the rainy season yet, so it doesn't get that cold or wet at night yet."

Goku actually keeps quiet the rest of the way, sporadically falling behind to see which way I'm going before running ahead again; a few times he leaves the path entirely, taking to rows of rocks or lower tree-branches.

When we reach the little niche garden, he's there, asleep in the middle of it, curled up on the ground. I kneel next to him, brushing off a few dead leaves and bits of dried vine clinging to his hair and robe. He's flat out, and nudging his shoulder doesn't even get so much as a mumble.

"We should get him inside." I give Goku a few feet away a pointed look; he blinks, and rolls his eyes with a sigh, catching the implication.

"So where are we takin'him? He must not've wanted to sleep in his cell pretty badly, not that I blame him...", he asks, gathering up my sleeping ward so that he can carry the larger man without being too awkward; Goku doesn't even seem to notice the weight. He blinks with a sort of worried amazement, adding, "Damn, he's almost as bony as you..."

Besides whatever caused him to sleep out here..."My room's closer anyway, and there'll be fewer people in our way; it'll be quieter." I stand and walk out, Goku following.

"Yeah, the acolytes down there are pretty nosy. Has he been eating okay? I don't think it's good to be that bony, y'know. Course, I guess he's still recovering, right? He still kinda smells like blood even, unless that's normal for him or something, but...eh, probably nothing, he's been around blood a lot lately, that might be it too...and he's been blundering around all these thorns in the dark. Hey, how long do you think it'd take to talk them into getting him a better room if the acolytes' cells bother him that much? I know he's supposed to be being punished and all, but it won't mean much to give him that room if he won't stay in it, and I wouldn't stick a rat in those rooms, and it didn't take you long to get me my own room near yours when you started bugging them about it. Maybe just one of the other rooms, right? But it'd have to be something away from the stuffy ones-"

"Goku?"

"Yeah?"

"Shut up."

He goes quiet with a mutter as we get out of the gardens to the main building. He stays quiet until we're almost to my room.

"Sanzo? You didn't eat at breakfast."

"Feh." I shrug and open the door.

He stops outside the door I'm holding open, giving me a sharp look. "You are gonna eat, right?"

"I'll go by the kitchens later." I wave him in, blowing it off. He walks in with a sidelong glare, setting my charge in my bed and pulling the blanket over him while I let go of the door; once that's settled, he faces me, arms crossed, tapping one foot.

"And you'll eat when you do, right? You'd better not be skipping meals until you pass out again."

I hunch my shoulders, leaning on the wall by the door and glaring right back. "I'll get something."

He glowers, catching the loophole, then storms to the door. "If I have to carry you somewhere 'cuz you pass out again, I'm gonna dump you in the koi pond!"

And pulls the door shut behind him with a resounding 'whumph'.

I'm left with a quiet vigil; he didn't stir once that I noticed the entire time he was being carried. He's breathing evenly and seems alright, he's just sleeping like the dead. I catch myself with one hand curled in front of my face in a gesture of habit; the big window's open letting a good breeze through, and I'm not going anywhere, so I check the inner pocket of the robe - and it's empty. A second pocket in the sleeve is also empty, although my lighter, as usual, is right in the pocket it usually stays in. I've already emptied and put away everything out of my satchel; digging under some folded formal silk robes in the bottom drawer finds - nothing. The acolyte cleaning-fairies have been busy again. I've got no clue what it matters; for this to happen this consistently, one of the higher-ups has to be ordering them to make sure I don't keep any cigarettes stashed. One of these days, I'm going to have to booby-trap my drawers.

I pull out the chair by my desk and sit down, next to the bed. It's a bright day out, and sunlight streams through the window, reflecting off his monocle; I briefly wonder if I should move the eyepiece, but it doesn't seem to be bothering him, and if he's passed out this thoroughly, he probably needs the rest - I'd rather not disturb him. There's nothing to do but sit here, listen to the birds outside, and wait, while the sunlight shifts angle until it's falling straight into the room, over the bed and part of the chair. After a while, I stand up and pace for a minute, then go back to leaning against the door.

The sun's been straight in for a few minutes when his eyelids flicker and open, eyes staring blearily at the ceiling.

"Why did you stay out all night like that?"

"Did I?" He seems to be not-quite focused on the ceiling, still half-asleep.

"Yes. I found you passed out this morning." I kick the temptation to let any irritation creep in; I've already been through something like this with Goku a few years ago.

"What time is it now?", he asks, still dazed but less aimlessly muzzy.

"Almost noon." I rub the bridge of my nose, fighting off sarcasm as he's sitting in the spill of bright, shadowless sunlight.

He flinches, sits up with a wobble, and fumbles with his eyepiece, taking a second to get ahold of it before he takes it off and sets it on the blanket, rubbing his eyes. He just pauses like that, holding still; the clouds in his aura go from dazed and hazy to coalesce back into the spiral, coiling inward.

"Why did you stay out all night?" No confrontation - all I need is a reason, I don't need him feeling threatened.

He folds his hands on the blanket in front of him, then...something, a shift, an upset in the spiral shrinking in, and he shudders and pulls his arms around himself as if the room were suddenly freezing. "I needed some fresh air", he quavers, and there's something major left out and skirted. He draws a few deep breaths, shaking slightly. "I guess I was more exhausted than I thought." A sort of forced calm struggles over his voice. Something got to him and it wasn't just stale air - with Goku it was a hatred of enclosed spaces bordering on claustrophobia; he's shown no signs of being bothered by enclosed spaces so far, was it the dark or just the oppressive atmosphere?

He picks up the monocle and puts it back on, then blinks blankly a couple times, looking around the room as if it's only just registered. "You..." He looks again, double-checking, then gives me a wide-eyed, quizzical look. "Brought me to your room?"

"It was closer than yours." And less hassle. And quieter.

He looks back down to the blanket, picking at it; his voice drops out into gloom. "You shouldn't have bothered." There's a brief, visible struggle to hide it, as if he's flinching away from what was just voiced; his tone flattens out. "I'm sure the other monks threw a fit. I'm supposed to be paying you the proper respect for saving my life, and I'm just being a bother to you."

The other monks didn't even really see us carry him in, but that's not really the important point. "They're not even a part of this. I'm responsible for what happens to you, and I'm not going to leave you in the cold like that."

That almost seems to startle him into looking up and meeting my gaze, caught off-balance; the spiral fractures out lost and confused, then lashes back inward, as he cringes, wrapping his arms around himself as if the room went freezing again. "I'm not worthy of your concern." For the first time, the dark spiral's plain in his voice, dark, quiet, soaked through with loathing turned inward. He tenses, pulling inward and away. It's as if he's turned all to fragile crystal-spun glass, on the brink of shattering, and I'm the wrong person for handling crystal, when one wrong word could break everything - but I can't walk away, there's noone else here.

"It's my decision who I'm going to worry about." No sarcasm. No veiled hostility, maybe less of my usual arm's length than I'd like, and - I did just admit it out loud, didn't I; there just went any denial that I'm worried about him.

He stops cringing so much, but it's less relaxing and more a defeated slump. The spiral's coiling into a strangling noose, shredding itself as it collapses inward. It doesn't seem to matter if I'm harsh, indifferent, or dragging out admissions that I care about him; everything I do just seems to cause him to turn more in on himself. Besides the promise not to walk away, I've accepted being specifically responsible for what happens to him, but nothing I do seems to be making any difference, besides preventing him from dying.

"I'm sorry. I won't stay out all night again.", he half-whispers; there's a quirk of something left out, barely caught through the rest of the roiling.

"You need to take care of yourself."

"Why?", another half-whisper, a slight wince.

"I didn't save you to watch you die." The words are detached, distant; as if somehow I'm no longer controlling my own speech, as if the dark little corners are worming their way into the open of their own free will.

Somehow, the roil snaps itself into the coiled-spiral; the shivering stops, and he's just staring down at the blankets. "I understand." His voice is either calm, flat, or shades of both, and it seems like there's nowhere else to go from whatever corner we've just unearthed, except back to the rest of the world, and the day to day worries.

"When was the last time you ate something?"

He blinks and starts. "I ate dinner.", he says simply, off-balance, and it's a familiar dodge if ever I heard one.

"Last night?"

"Yes." He turns suddenly, looking at me, and the balance shifts back away from me. "When was the last time you ate?"

It's my turn to flinch; I'm never going to get away from this today, am I? I look away at the floor. "Yesterday."

I'm preparing for the lecture, but all he does is stand up and start straightening his robes and dusting off, composing himself, his entire demeanor and tone of voice suddenly changed to calm, composed, and politely friendly. "I'm sorry, I'm being lax in my duties." He does a perfect formal bow, and then looks at the door, clear intent to leave; I unlock it and hold it open. "I will return as soon as I can; it may take a while to find what you asked for."

"Thank you.", I mumble, staring at the floor, trying to make sense of where this new and very sudden shift came from. He bows again, smiling, and leaves, and it isn't until several minutes later that I catch up to what just happened.

Some order came out of the spiral, and I'm not sure what to make of it. He's stopped snarking at me. He seems to have decided he's going to take responsibility for me. Lax in his duties - find…that subject…

He's going into town.

I have a sudden and very visible twitch. Then, I'm down the hall headed to the gates.

When I get there, there's no sign of him; at first I wonder if I beat him out, and start scanning the courtyard to see if he's around, then I notice the gate guards giving me odd looks. I ask the nearest one, "Has...?", with the same set of charades from the other day; he nods, with an expression between confusion and something wrong.

"Yes, he just left - he said you'd sent him on an errand."

He went into town. Nothing will come of it if he sticks to the busy market squares, and technically he is doing what I told him to, but - I scan the courtyard again for Goku, to send Goku with him, but the boy's nowhere to be found. Sending one of the guards to accompany him will defeat the purpose. Going out myself will draw attention, moreso than he probably will on his own.

"Was this the truth?"

"Yes. Yes, he is on an errand I'd requested." Half-accidentally, but I did.

"Then is there a problem?"

If I say yes and don't explain, I'm going to get him into trouble. If I say yes and do explain, there'll be noise raised and people sent out. "No."

I turn around and walk back to the main building, trying not to look to much like I'd just gotten confused. Not far in, I catch sight of the Constable-Intermediary headed for one of the smaller rooms usually reserved for quiet study and meditation.

I tail him, following him in; he doesn't even notice until the door clicks shut. He stiffens, quickly guessing that he's just walked into a trap. He does a quick double-take over his shoulder at the door to confirm that it's me, then turns with a dejected, resigned short bow.

"Is there a problem, Honored Sanzo?"

"I just wanted to amend what I'd said before - there's some specific things I want you to keep in mind."

"And that would be, Honored Sanzo?" He's running up a sort of white flag already.

"Just to make sure that certain parties who are likely assuming his death was literal, don't realize it wasn't."

He sighs, as though he'd been expecting it, then a wry, stressed-out chuckle escapes. "You think I'd want them realizing that?" At my lapse into a dumbfounded pause, he continues. "You know the laws they work under as well as I do. They haven't meddled because they believe he's dead; I was assured that if that were not the case, they would respond as per their usual customs of retribution."

The realization of what that would mean dawns cold. "Return the injury in kind, then go beyond that to warn anyone from doing anything like that again." Kill him, then kill anyone connected to him, anyone aiding him, seeking blood for blood until it's even. The temple's sheltered him. "They'd try to wipe out the Temple of the Setting Sun."

"It's not that I lack respect for the better martial artists here, but if t they attempt that, they would be on our doorstep before the city guard realized there was a problem, and there would only be three people here I'd expect to be able to do much to defend this place - you, Goku, and him. That is assuming, of course, that it remains an isolated incident, which I doubt. For my part, I've already assured them that he is dead, and they're not fond of being lied to - I've been trying to maintain enough distance to believably claim ignorance."

"Shit..." I bury my face in my hands, rubbing my temple.

"Please tell me you'd thought of that and have this planned?"

"I've already explained him as a random disciple picked up on the trip. We stick with that until I can find a place for him to go, and get him out of their way."

He shifts uncomfortably. "I suppose that's the best I should've expected. Are you really going to keep him here a thousand days?"

Especially with this reminder? "Hell no."

"Well then - whenever you see fit to call the council to cut the sentence short, you'll have my vote." He hasn't lied or dodged my questions once; this has him honestly scared.

"Alright. Whatever." I turn the handle one-handed and slip out.

I pace the courtyard for a while, far enough from the gate to not draw the questions of the guards, but within sight of it. The more agitation creeps into my pacing, the more odd looks and whispers I find myself shrugging off and trying to ignore. Finally I just sit, hunched over, on the edge of a raised garden area at the base of a tree, watching the gate.

I'm there long enough to almost start falling back into fretting when Goku perches on the edge next to me, after coming through the bushes behind me. He's got some kind of pastry, and I'm not even going to bother asking where he got it. He leans forward until he's more than in the edges of my peripheral vision, then when I don't acknowledge him, he shrugs and sits down, eating. It's some kind of small meat pie, so I know it didn't come from the temple.

"Still sneaking out?"

He freezes, trying to figure out if he's in trouble or not.

"If it comes up at all - Cho Gonou is dead, and my new acolyte is someone else."

The confusion drops into an offended look. "Well DUH!" He glances back and forth, then lowers his voice. "Of course I'm not going to go blabbing about that when those creeps might be around! That was the whole point of the symbolic death thing, to throw them off the track, right?"

I catch myself chuckling dryly in spite of myself. "Town quiet?"

Goku rolls his eyes. "It's market day. It's never quiet on market day, there's too many people and too many merchants and travelers and things from all over for it to be quiet."

"The other kind of quiet."

"Oh. Yeah, nothing's going on that way." He leans forward again, then tracks the point my gaze hasn't moved from. "Why are you watching the gate? Are you expecting someone?" He studies the gate hard again, and my face. "...wait, I thought he wasn't supposed to leave the temple..."

"He's on an errand." Flat voice.

"So that was him."

I look away from the gate to him. "You saw him!"

"Well...maybe not, I dunno, but most of the people in robes have shaved heads, I just figured it probably wasn't him 'cuz he's not supposed to leave, and it was the middle of the square so it was kinda hard to keep track of things and smells get all confused so I'm still not sure, but yeah, I think it was, if he went into town. Why'd you send him out like that all of a sudden if he's not supposed to go out? Aren't the stuffy people going to get angry about that? Is it really a good idea for him to go out like that, if you're worried about them going after him an' don't want them knowing he's still alive?"

In a rare event, Goku actually recognizes the beginning of a twitch, and shuts up, returning to the meat pie and edging a half-inch away. There's a few minutes of silence after it's gone, both of us watching the gate, before he starts up again.

"Well...it looked like he wasn't really wandering off - an' he can probably take care of himself pretty well, right? I mean, if any of them try to harass him, I think I'd feel sorry for them." Silence, birds chirping. "Sanzo? Have you eaten breakfast or anything since this morning?" I hunch forward a bit more, and he starts glaring at me in dull annoyance. "When was the last time you ate, anyway? You're going to pass out again at this rate, or make yourself sick!" My only response is to glower at the gate, and his irritation spikes.

One second I'm sitting hunched over on the ledge, the next I've been shoved off it so that I almost stumble over into the paving stones. "GO EAT! I'll keep an eye out for him and go looking for him if he's not back in a few minutes, you need to take care of yourself," he ducks the fan thrown at him without even missing a beat, "an' if you don't go eat something, I'm going to drag you to the kitchen and sit there until you eat something!"

There's a staredown as he's glaring at me, standing on the ledge, I'm glaring back, and the normal courtyard traffic has stopped and is all watching us. Neither of us is yielding, until finally I turn away, and dust off my shoulder. "You'd better keep an eye out for him while I'm inside." I storm into the temple; he's not following or saying anything, so he must not've caught that I didn't say I'd eat.

The first place I try to head is actually the baths, but I'm barely inside the main building when there's a call of "Honored Sanzo!" behind me and one of the older monks is hurrying to catch up to me. I just stop as he jogs up, leaning on the wall behind me to catch his breath.

"Yes?" I slowly look over my shoulder with a warning glare.

"There was...something...I meant...to discuss with you."

Oh. Joy. "And that is?"

"The boy - Goku - you're not considering naming him your successor, are you?"

I turn around, to better glower down at him as he's regaining his composure. I wouldn't stick Goku with this job for anything, but it annoys me more that they seem to think they can dictate who I should pass it on to if anything happens to me. I bet the other Sanzos don't get harassed about succession as much, that the whole subject is some thinly-veiled plea to the Gods for me to bite it so someone less obnoxious to them can take the job. "What would make you think that?"

He almost seems tempted to edge back an inch, but holds his ground. "Well, it's just that, when Koumyou Sanzo was alive," -_this idiot's dead_- "he doted on you the same way you dote on that boy - it was always Kouryu this and Kouryu that," I will not kill him for invoking old ghosts and dead names, I will not maim another monk on temple grounds for being a moron, no wounding even, I keep any expression of how much he's tempting fate to a quiet hiss between my teeth and seeing if I can will his head to implode by glaring, "and you've always been so - ah - harsh on your students that it seems as though you don't have any other options under consideration, while you're often putting yourself in unnecessary danger, so I'm sure you should understand our honest concern with regards to your decision in this matter…" He trails off, waiting for an answer, as my ward walks up behind him, perfectly intact, carrying a partially-wrapped loaf of dark grain bread almost two feet long.

"I have returned with that bread you asked for, Honored One." It's oddly impressive, that he can sound that calm and self-abasing while fighting to avoid the expression of the cat that got the canary. Whatever he's up to, it's an excuse to get away from the blithering waste of space.

"Bring it to my rooms." The monk's still there, waiting with an expectant look; he probably expects me to hang around to 'discuss the matter'. I turn to lead the way back to my room, only giving a cold, "I will give your words the consideration they deserve.", over my shoulder, not bothering to try to cover that I'm blowing him off. I hear him sigh dejectedly behind me, and I'm sure the head of the temple will hear about this one. "Follow.", I add, directed at my ward. I hear him apologizing to the twit for the disturbance, then he catches up behind me. More than once on the way up to my room, other monks end up scattering out of the hallway ahead of me; I can hear the disapproving mutters in my wake. If any of them even tries to interrupt me, there won't be any attempts at propriety.

They stay out of the way until I've reached my room. I only stop to unlock the door, just leaving it open long enough for my ward to follow before I close and lock it. He sets the bread down on the small, round table off one side, and turns to face me, as if everything should make sense now.

"Why is there bread on my table?" If that was all that he went into town and gave me that heart attack over...

The smug only grows under the surface of his flat expression. "Ah, this bread is highly recommended for its delectable insides."

The sneaky bastard was true to his word and outsmarted the guards. "So that's how you snuck it in."

He reaches over, grinning, and pulls the loaf apart; it looks like the whole thing was neatly cut previously, as it comes apart cleanly, three ceramic bottles in hollowed out spaces in the bread. He sets the top half down, pulls the chair out, and steps aside, motioning me to it.

He's still being unpredictable as all Hell, but at least it's not always in ways that make things more difficult.

I sit down, with him watching expectantly. The bottles are plain and unmarked, white without even any tint to the glaze. I pull the stopper out and take a sip. Whatever annoyance he'd had over the request for alcohol, he must've gotten over it, since he brought back strong, sharp whiskey; I give it time to warm and settle.

"Try the bread.", he nudges.

I pull a piece off and study it, wary for any warning twinges, but the whiskey seems to already be deadening it into submission; I can't say I'm exactly hungry, but I'm not feeling sick thinking about eating.

It occurs to me then, that he'd left right after talking to me this morning, and if he spent his time getting the whiskey and setting up the bread for smuggling, he might not've eaten. I give him a prodding look. "Don't you need to eat, too?"

He shakes his head calmly. "I picked up something to eat while I was in town." He's telling the truth, but he didn't say he ate; I'm not sure if he honestly ate, or if he's using one of the same dodges I'm prone to. I could challenge him on it, but ... He's actually eaten in the last couple days; one missed meal isn't going to kill him, if he did skip it, and I don't feel like another confrontation if I don't have to. I shrug it off with a nod and start eating slowly, sipping on the whiskey whenever the knots threaten to return.

He stays watching, probably just to make sure I'm actually eating enough to be worthwhile, then quietly says, "There's something I have to go do."; the smug is fading tiredly.

I give him another quiet nod, and he slips out, the door shutting behind him.

I go on picking on the bread, rationing out the whiskey; I can't be sure when I'll get more. It's not that everyone who's nagged me about my eating habits doesn't have a point; I know bloody well that I need to eat, but it seems pointless to force myself when I know it's just going to make me sick without a drink. Given the choice between skipping meals and throwing up, I prefer skipping meals.

I stash the bottles in a desk drawer under some papers, where anyone getting in to clean isn't likely to look, put the loaf back together and wrap it on the dresser.

When I finally get to the baths, they're about empty, affording some blessed privacy for a change. The communal baths and the kitchen are the only places in the temple with running water; according to the records, when the pipes were built for the rest of the city, they'd wanted to disturb the temple as little as possible. For some reason, they've been allergic to anything like curtains or screens, although some of the corner stalls and tubs are a little less open, in the back. Few people come in the day, so it's not too hard to get soap and towels myself and slip to the back without anyone seeing. I snatch the back corner that's actually got a showerhead and some privacy, folding the sutra carefully within reach, and laying everything else nearby.

I actually get a few minutes of peace and quiet to clean up and relax. Then there's the noise of a couple other people - acolytes, teenagers - coming in trying to be quiet and failing. As usual for my luck, they end up over on the other side of one of the thin dividing walls from me.

"...ran the groundskeeper ragged after stealing almost all the berries off the north hedgerows; there was a scene in the south courtyard right before he went straight over the wall. Sometimes I wonder why they let him stay here, he's not even a student."

"He's Genjo Sanzo's ward; he goes wherever the Sanzo goes."

"Sometimes I wonder about the Sanzo, too." Just what I wanted to listen to. "How do we know he's actually the one the Gods ordained to carry the sutra?" I lean back against the wall under the still-running water, torn between leaving, trying to just tune them out, or letting them know I'm here.

"He has the red chakra mark, and he's been carrying it for years now…"

The really stupid one drops his voice. "The mark's not hard to duplicate, and he's not really a part of the temples himself - he's not Buddhist, he scorns the tenets and the Gods, and he's known to spend time around the criminal elements of the city quite a bit." Spend time around them threatening answers out of them and trying to keep them vaguely in line when I can't get rid of them outright. "He's injured students before, too." How ironic, for him to remember that when the thought's crossing my mind.

"…There was something I'd heard from someone coming in from the western frontier, that a few years ago he'd killed several priests during the plague in that province…" …Right. That. Of course the reports only mention my killings, not anything else about the incident. "…you don't think…"

There's something in the shading of the sense of nervous doubt with just a tinge of fear that...

They are not going there.

The pistol's next to the sutra, within easy reach without getting either wet; I pick it up. "If he's not the legitimate heir…do you think…" They're going there. I pull the hammer back with a distinct metal click. "Did you hear something?"

They're just close enough that I can get a clear feel for where they are from their auras, clear enough to aim so the two shots through the screen only come close without actually hitting either of them. There's two cries and total panic fits, followed by a very satisfying terrified dead silence as they're realizing who the only person in the monastery that carries a gun is.

"I think that if you two inconsiderate twits want to gossip, you should do it the fuck away from me where I don't have to listen to it.", I snarl, and shut the water off, drying and dressing hastily. "And if you really want to speculate about how I got my position, you can bloody well check the damn records instead of running off at the mouth like a couple of brainless barnyard hens, unless you really want to test whether or not I'm willing to kill other monks!"

There's a thin, quiet whimper of "…m-many apologies…Honored Sanzo…" as I pull the robe on; I drape the sutra over my shoulders and put the gun in the holster hidden in the sleeve as I storm out without even looking back.

Every day I stay here is another tick added to the probability of a homicide.


	8. Light Flickers

...And somehow, The-Youkai-Formerly-Known-As-Gonou managed to not get much of a part in this chapter except offscreen; temple chaos and Goku-or-aftermath-thereof kind-of upstaged him. Just trust me that next chapter he will be back to getting screentime, and this runaway train of a work will remember that it's supposed to be mostly an angst fic. (Because Sanzo's not allowed to get comfortable with things - ever! Mwaheheheheh...)

* * *

It was tempting to just hole up in my room, but if I was going to be antisocial, I could at least do something useful, and there was something I'd been neglecting. 

I know my entrance registered with the librarian, but as I paid no heed to the desk or the area he was in, and was headed for something specific, he just left me be; he wasn't in the habit of herding everyone that came in. The first place I stopped was some of the official records; they were horribly spotty for the outlying villages, but I grabbed everything for that area that seemed to be in a date range where I might find something anyway. Next I looked up what priests had traveled through that area in the last few years, and collected the journals and accounts that were on record. Finally, I hit where the records of legal cases the temple intervened in were kept, fishing out his file in the hopes they recorded something. I leave with a stack of papers, folders, books, and documents I can barely see over, taking the whole mess back to my room. The stack ends up taking over the table, with the first few journals and sets of records on my desk to the side.

It looks like I've got a good opportunity to not have to keep an eye on him every minute, Goku doesn't need much watching, so I lock my door and sit down to filter out what might be useful from what I'll just be wasting time on, a stack of paper for notes next to me.

I start by going over his file from the trial. From the amount of information in it, the idea to get the temples involved had to've been mostly the Sanbutshin's doing; the entire report feels cobbled together, gathered in the gap between when I left and when we got back. Before the killings, it drops off into a big blank, the only information being an idea of what specific village he was from.

I narrow the stacks, filtering out some of the records of the other villages, then start on the legal and diplomatic ledgers. Three books worth of skimming page by page later, there's been plenty of mention of Hyakugan Maoh and the Dark Crow - who ruled that area - but not even a letter of Cho Gonou or Kanan, my only two leads. The dinner bell only barely registers as I start on the fourth volume. I even manage to work right through the sound of Goku's voice in the hallway and the sense of his too-bright aura until he's banging on the door. "Oy, Sanzo!" He continues banging, and I put a slip of scrap-paper in the book to mark my place, rubbing my eyes. "Sanzo?" The door handle rattles, locked. I set the book down, straightening the stacks; I may not get away, but I'm not going to be rushed about this.

There's an absolutely pathetic, lost puppy whimper from the other side of the door, as he drags his words out in the whine. "Saaaaaannzzoooooo! I'm huuunnngrryyyyyy!" He's trying to sound like he's going to die if he isn't fed, but it's not hard to tell that it's total bullshit. I pick up my mostly-blank notes, roll them up, and pause at the door. If he wants to whine like a lost dog...

Then pull the door open, and crack the roll of paper over his head. "Shut up, you stupid monkey! Go eat if you're so hungry - you know where the dining hall is!"

The wounded look is nothing more than camouflage for the background smug as he's rubbing his head. "But Sanzo! Those stuffy monks look at me meaner than you do when you're not there..." A calculated look of dejection and wounded pleading is all over his face, while my ward stands behind him watching the performance. I'd be willing to bet Goku came to fetch me for dinner just to make sure I ate.

"Fine.", I glower at him, set my notes by the door, and lock it behind me. Goku falls back into his old pattern of running back and forth struggling to keep a faster pace than me without losing sight, yammering the whole way, my ward following behind me in my shadow. There's pricks from several directions of suspicion and indignation; word of my outburst at the acolytes earlier must've already spread. The priests in the dining hall edge around me, resigned to my presence but merely tolerating me, Goku, and my ward.

Goku pointedly hovers over my shoulder until I've gotten food, then runs off to his own devices. Once my ward's gotten his own meal, there's an awkward moment where the monks in the area are all staring at us expectantly, and he's looking to me as if waiting. I shoot the other monks a glare until they quit watching, then hand him my plate and stalk out.

Dinner is quiet besides that I'm getting the occasional prodding look, as he's glancing up now and then to check that I'm eating. Once he's eaten and made sure I've at least had something for dinner, he takes the plates and leaves. I get a couple minutes of peace, then Goku comes dashing out of the building.

"Hey, Sanzo!"

I mourn the peace and quiet while he waits, just behind my shoulder, for some acknowledgement.

"What'd you do to Anji? He's acting sorta scared, and he was actually polite to me!"

So the Constable-Intermediary's including Goku in this. It makes sense, really, from what he'd said about who he'd be able to hide behind if things went bad. "We came to an understanding."

He gives me an odd look. "...Must've been some understanding, you were practically plotting to kill him a month ago after that stunt with telling the serpent Maoh when you'd be on the road in that area; he had been avoiding me ever since."

"Let's leave it that he's in a position where I'm the least of his worries."

"Oh, and someone told me to tell you that the High Abbot guy wants to see you about the thing earlier, with the shooting at the acolytes again." He rambles it as if it's an afterthought. "What'd they do to piss you off?" He waits to check if there's going to be an answer, then shrugs when there isn't. "Do you really need to keep the gun in the baths? I mean, I know people try to kill you off and on, but they don't ever get in here, and I think they'd be in trouble anyway harassing you in the shower whether you had the gun or not." He shuffles, and I can almost hear his attention span die before he runs off again.

I get up and head back to my room before an actual messenger can find me, and lock the door; if they send anyone to fetch me tonight, I'm going to ignore them. I settle down to continue sifting through the records and journals.

Even narrowed down to the range of a village, it's slow, tedious work, digging through line by line of cramped handwritten notes and praying the information I'm looking for isn't in one of the unreadable passages. The sun's going down and the breezes off the ocean are becoming cooler by the time I get through the last of the records and am left with journals kept by random traveling monks.

The sun sets and I have to light a candle to keep slogging through the random travelogues. Most of the accounts are very poetic, to be sure, but there's next to nothing in the way of practical information besides the occasional comment on the weather or maybe a mention of some harassment on the road.

By somewhere past midnight, my brain's turning to mush enough that I almost miss it; an account that started out just like any other random roadside incident, the monk mentioning running across a lost child who'd gotten turned around in the woods and separated from his classmates. The monk brought the child back to town, found the school group, teacher was very thankful, it impressed the monk that such a young man seemed to be handling teaching that many children that well, very bright, bookish, soft-spoken, fading hint of an unfamiliar accent, and halfway down the second page he offhand refers to the teacher by name.

Cho Gonou.

I stop and read back over the monk's comments on the schoolteacher in detail just to be sure. Green eyes, dark hair, struck the monk as almost-frail at one point, had wandered into town one day and taken over teaching the children, nobody seemed to know much about him besides that he seemed to have known his wife Kanan - also a "mystery that blew in one day" - from childhood sometime.

He was a schoolteacher.

My entire career as a Sanzo, any time I'd been in this area, I'd had to be mindful of Hyakugan Maoh and his allies, tread lightly around their areas of power for lack of a good opportunity to do anything about them, and the bloody bastard finally bites it at the hands of a schoolteacher. It's like another one of those random details that just proves that existence is a big cosmic joke.

I close the journal; if the town didn't know anything else about him, then I won't find anything else here. I stack everything to take it back to the library in the morning and go to bed, pulling the blanket up against the breezes turning cold.

The dawn wakes me up halfway; I blearily take the stack of books back to the library, setting them on the desk for reshelving. The librarian scans the spines with a dark chuckle, but doesn't say more than an offhand, "Only just now trying to find out what you've gotten yourself into, eh?" as I'm lurching out to go back to bed.

I almost get back to sleep when there's a knock at my door; my first bet is that the head of the temple finally sent for me to chew me out for scaring the acolytes again.

"Who is it?", I snap, one arm draped over my face to shield the sun out of my eyes. There's silence, for a second.

"Sanzo? I've brought you breakfast..." It's my ward, sounding timid.

I get up and open the door; he's dressed, neat, and looks like he's already had time to bathe and everything this morning. He's only carrying one plate, and as I take it he catches the door to hold it open. I catch myself muttering under my breath, cut it off, and just slump at the table staring at the plate.

"You eat yet?" He shakes his head, looking at me half-dazed. "Go eat." He bows and closes the door, retreating.

I end up nodding at the table, dozing for a while before I pull out one of the ceramic bottles and eat.

He finally catches me as I'm on my way to return the plate.

"Most Honored High Priest Genjo Sanzo the thirty-first!" The older man rattles off my full name and title like a parent snapping a child's full name for emphasis. "Did that boy deliver my message yesterday?"

I hand the plate over, wanting to grind my teeth. "I got your message just fine."

"I've been waiting to see you on this matter."

"I was busy. Studying." I nod to the acolyte cleaning up who takes the plate, very carefully taking my time about dealing with the head of the temple. By the time I turn around to face him, carefully straight and staring him straight in the eye, he's irked to boiling over.

"I need to speak with you in my office, immediately."

"I have other affairs to attend to; you can speak to me right here." Much more important affairs, like patrolling the back gardens.

He glowers, picking up on my blowing-off. "I must respectfully insist that you refrain from harming the acolytes ever again." I'm sure he'd love to be able to actually reprimand me; forcing him to talk in the open like this, where he can't skirt Right Speech to speak his mind, is forcing him all the more to face how toothless he is towards me.

"Well, there shouldn't be any problem then; the last injury was six months ago." And it was completely their stupidity, too.

"I'm afraid there's the matter of the incident yesterday." His temper's fraying, which is all the more incentive for me to pour on the stiff protocol and poise. "Smoking and drinking can pass as eccentricities, attempting to kill the acolytes cannot."

"I still fail to see the problem; they were never in any actual danger."

"You shot at them. Through one of the bathing stalls."

"And when have I ever hit an acolyte with this?" The pistol slips easily out of the holster in my sleeve, and he starts as he realizes I'm holding it up.

"You shouldn't even have an instrument of bloodshed like that on temple grounds."

"Regardless, it's never harmed an acolyte, and they should count themselves lucky I consider accounts even and chose not to otherwise take them to task for their insults. Slandering an elder or higher-ranking member of the brotherhood was taken rather seriously, the last I checked." He winces at the underhanded barb, as much at him as at the acolytes, and it's hard not to pick up a sadistic smirk at his desire to squirm. "Of course, I'm sure you would know the punishments typically called for far better than I would; I try to avoid the position of passing such judgments on others in such minor matters, being only a mortal Sanzo."

Much of the kitchen staff are surreptitiously watching, and I think he's achieved a new level of loathing for me. He struggles with a scowl, then straightens his shoulders, grooms his demeanor, and tries to match me in "cold, aloof, and condescending". "Well then, Honored Sanzo, I will trust that you will treat your fellow brothers in the faith with respect and deference, and mind that your students do the same." He bows only as much as propriety demands and sweeps off; the kitchen staff falls still, then hurry back to redouble their work as if denying they'd been watching.

I wander out on my now-scheduled "inspection of the gardens", drifting through trying to avoid drawing more than cursory notice. Once or twice I have to focus my attention somewhere empty and pretend to be busy when I pass by some older priest lecturing and feel the warning prick of interest in my presence that usually heralds a request to teach. After a while, the dinner bell rings, and my ward finds me with food, quietly accepting heading to my room to eat, so I can drink and make sure the food stays down. He stays long enough to finish his meal and make sure I've eaten, then takes the plates back and heads out.

I drift through the library, just sorting out some histories and books on folklore and cosmology. The librarian watches my presence without comment as I take them back to my room; it's an old routine that happens whenever I'm stuck here for some reason.

The next day he actually tracks me down in one of the side courtyards, acting like he's been looking for me for some time; he natters at the edge of the courtyard cleaning his glasses, and almost turns to bustle off before he sees me leaning on the sunlit wall.

"Ah, Sanzo! There you are."

I acknowledge him with a quizzical nod; he usually only seeks me out if I forget to return something for too long.

"I just came to warn you to lie low for a few days. It seems that our esteemed High Abbot has gotten it into his head that as long as you're here like this, you should be living up to your title by teaching."

"And you're not going to nag me about the proper duties of my position yourself?"

He gives me a humorless look. "As much as I may think you're not very good at living up to your title, I'm not so stupid as to forget what happened the last few times you tried to teach. Some of the students are out of acolyte's robes and still have nervous twitches."

"If you're talking about that last one, I was teaching him to pay attention to his surroundings." If I'm going to waste my time running off at the mouth at some of these people, the least they can do is listen.

"You shot down a paper lantern on his head."

"If he'd been paying attention, he would've seen me draw the gun and aim, and would've known to get out of the way. It was a lesson by example." A simple lesson, too; don't ask the Sanzo some question requiring a long drawn-out answer thinking he won't notice it's a pretense so you can nod off.

"What about that other one? The one where it took the groundskeeper months to repair the damage to the pond?" Ah. That.

"He was questioning some of the teachings on the symbolism of the lotus, so I gave him a closer look." Another fateful combination of bad timing, their bad wording, a golden setup in staging that was too good to pass up, and the uncanny talent some of them seem to have for treading on the wrong nerves.

The humorless look gets more accusing. "He caught cold and was sick for a week afterwards."

"That's not too bad, as illnesses go." He had a bit of a cough and a slight fever; he was just being melodramatic about it. He lost his voice for a few days, too, and it was a blessing.

"And the other one that month, who ended up unable to use his hands for much for three days?" Oh gods, that one…

"He had been insisting that if he was to be an acolyte in my service, he should accompany me everywhere when I left the temple. I told him I had business where he'd get seriously hurt, and he didn't believe me, so I told him that he could follow me if he could get from where he was standing to the door, to prove that he could take care of himself if things went bad. He failed at that, miserably, and all I did was a simple nerve pinch they teach in the first few weeks of the self defense classes - painful, maybe, but hardly dangerous; I didn't even follow through on the throws. He'd have gotten into much worse if I'd let him get away with sneaking out after me like he was trying to do. I was protecting him from his own lack of foresight."

The old man falls silent for a few minutes, shaking his head. "You rehearse these explanations, don't you?"

I roll my eyes. "As often as I had to repeat them at the time?"

"…At any rate, my point stands; it is for the better of the students that you not teach. Actually, just by that last real injury, and not anything… spectacular like the Self-Defense Class Incident, I wonder if you should be around the acolytes at all."

"…You mean the dislocated shoulder?"

"Precisely."

"His fault."

He sighs, exasperated. "He was only trying to get your attention!"

"And should've known better than to tug on the sutra to do so. I have those reflexes for very good reasons."

The librarian slowly shakes his head, half burying his face in his hands. "Just… don't let anyone who seems to be on official business catch you for a few days. Things are so much quieter here without you sending students to the infirmary. You can even hide in the library if you want, I'll pretend I don't know where you are if it'll keep the acolytes in one piece."

There's a sudden commotion around the building, then Goku dashes by full-tilt, slowing down only to toss me a pair of long pruning shears as he's running. Not far behind him is the groundskeeper, struggling to keep up and moving as fast as he can, yelling semi-coherently about "give that back" as he can catch his breath enough. He's too rabid to even notice that I'm holding the shears as he passes not five feet from me. The librarian watches the whole thing pass by with a raised eyebrow, then turns it to me, still holding the shears.

"…Aren't you going to say something?"

"He doesn't seem to be paying attention anyway."

"…You're never going to do anything about this game, are you?"

I shrug. "Whatever keeps Goku busy so he doesn't wander off and get into worse trouble."

"...And the shears?"

"I'll leave them at his toolshed or something."

The librarian's deadpan expression suggests that he's just now remembering why he doesn't get out more often. "…I'm going back to the library." He heads inside while I walk back to where the toolshed is, to drop the shears off before the groundskeeper comes back to rant at me about Goku.


	9. Traps and Promises

Well, even if you haven't been reading Here Lies Gonou which's ahead of me by several chapters, you had to know things couldn't stay quite that peaceful for long. (in other words - "Now back to our regularly scheduled tests of Sanzo's sanity!")

Slightly belated note to Althea - I know I haven't said it, but like its "partner", this fic's not going to be a pairing; too many mental twitches on both sides, and especially the way I've handled Sanzo's little sixth sense, weelll…there's an object demonstration in this chapter how that really doesn't help with Sanzo's whole "don't touch me" act. That and good ol' stubborn Sanzo's struggling to keep being set in his ways enough that it'll be a while after this incident's little tacnuke strike on his denial over caring before he'll probably even be able to admit it out loud without a nervous breakdown of some kind or level involved. He's kind-of a spazz that way.

Technically I shouldn't be posting right now (portfolio due tomorrow), but I've been poking at this for sanity breaks (funny that, how the fics with the least sanity are the ones I work on to save MY sanity), and today it decided to bug me until I finished this chapter.

Hell freezes over, too - Isil and I have another "identical in timeline/events" chapter break as of the end of this chapter.

* * *

My ward finds me for dinner, reading in an alcove of the back garden; it passes quietly besides Goku making an appearance. The groundskeeper finds me the next morning after breakfast, half pleading and half ranting for me to do something about Goku's off and on hobby of causing chaos; I tell the old man I'll talk to him, but he doesn't seem to notice that I don't specify about what. My ward seems to've fallen into a pattern as quiet and social as my own, and the librarian comments a couple times on him being a common presence. One of us always seems to track the other down for meals, and he eats better than do, granted that's not hard. I take the librarian's advice and find out of the way places in gardens or attics to read. A couple times we end up finding the same hiding spot, passing time both reading without much fuss. Goku breezes through occasionally, keeping me updated on what's going on around the temple, some of Chang'An, and a hundred other meaningless details. I end up dodging a couple messengers and the head of the temple himself, once. 

It's after two days have passed that one of Goku's rambles in the north wing attic one night actually draws my attention away from what I'm reading - he rattles on as usual, but keeps skipping bits or stopping, then goes quiet before dropping one question and waiting for an answer.

"Hey...has he gotten hurt?"

The question sinks in; there's only really one person he's started habitually referring to just with pronouns. "Not that I know of, why?"

"I dunno. He still smells like blood, an' I still dunno if that's normal for him or not, but lately he also smells a little sickish. I asked doc if maybe something didn't heal right, but he said everything healed up clean, so he's either getting sick or he's gotten hurt and isn't taking care of it. You sure nothing's happened?"

"If something has, he hasn't told me." I lay the paper-scrap marking my place, and slowly close the book.

"Well...he might just be coming down with a cold..." He stirs the dust on the ground with one finger, and doesn't seem to really believe that.

"I'll have to ask him about it."

"Well...I think I'm going to bed...g'night...you'll let me know what's going on, right?"

"Yeah."

He leaves through the round window, letting it latch itself behind him; I stare at the dustmotes in the darkness after he leaves, then douse the candle and walk downstairs to put the book away in my room.

I stare out the window, then leave the room. He's probably asleep by now, so I'll probably not get much done, but I'm going to at least check on him.

The area of the acolyte's cells is dead quiet, all the lights out; I open his door cautiously, so as not to wake him.

The blanket on the cot isn't even disturbed, and he's not there.

Something chokes in my throat before I catch it, remembering the shaking panic he'd avoided explaining when we'd brought him inside. Whatever had driven him outside before probably just happened again, and he's probably right in that same forgotten little alcove; I just need to remind him to come inside, before the night gets too cold. Hell, if it's just him coming down with the flu, this's probably why. I shut the door and head out for the back garden.

The halls are empty, the back gardens silent except for a few insects. It stays a calm, cool night, quiet until I get near the little forgotten thorn garden.

I almost stumble at a muffled, cut off sound of pain, accompanied by a dry snapping rattle I can't identify at first.

My first reflex is the paranoid one - tense to move, almost take off running, but there's no other aura there whatsoever besides his, no sense of outside hostility. I freeze momentarily, the scrape of my sandal seeming too loud to my ears, but there's no glimmer of notice. There's another cracking rattle and gasp; his aura around the corner is a dark, thick, jagged, knotted roil, devouring itself from the inside out, a bloody inward coil of pain and loathing.

Every time Goku's made a reference to him smelling like blood comes forward in my mind, every little offhand time he'd said it that I hadn't paid attention to. It's self-inflicted. When did this start? When was the first time Goku mentioned that he still smelled like blood? It had to've been not long after he was healed, there wasn't enough time for Goku to realize that the blood-scent wasn't just normal for him.

Another lash; I stop myself just short of dashing in there, snatching whatever he's flaying himself with away, I can't risk this turning into a struggle where one or both of us might get hurt. I lean back against the vine-covered wall, for stability, feeling less steady every second I'm not doing something; the thorns and bits of dead leaves catch in my robes and hair, tugging on the sutra. I have to say something - what? 'What the Hell do you think you're doing!', 'Idiot - stop hurting yourself!'? I can't say anything that'd give any more momentum to the self-destructive spiral; I've fed it far too much already, but every thought of acting is to catch and stop, force and confrontation. If I do something right this moment, I'm going to make things worse.

I swallow the lump in my throat and start putting one foot in front of the other to walk away, clenching my hands into fists in my sleeves. The longer I stay in that spot, the more likely I am to act without thinking and do more harm than good. I can't let this go on, but losing control won't help anyone. I need to go back inside, go back to my room, and calm down until I can think of a way to confront him about this without it turning into a fight or me snapping and saying things I shouldn't.

The silence of the temple only makes the echoes of what I'm walking away from louder in my mind. I'm still trying to banish it enough to calm down by the time I reach my room. I lock the door behind myself, then notice that I've visibly deepened the crescent indents in the palms of my gloves from my fingernails. I pace first to the dresser, digging through the drawers to confirm that no cigarettes have magically returned there, then to the desk; there's one of the ceramic bottles on the desk - I'd forgotten to put it away, and my room's been cleaned between when I had it out and now.

They must've gotten him cleaning my room; Goku'd never do it, and he's the only one that wouldn't throw out the alcohol.

I pick it up and get the stopper halfway off before I stop myself; this was brought in so I'd be able to eat, I'm not sure when I'll be able to get more, and if I open it now, I'm liable to empty it. I restopper it, hiss through my teeth at myself, and lock it in the drawer with the other two he'd gone to the trouble of talking past the gate guards and risking his life, wittingly or unwittingly, to get. In the end, it makes the internal tic over what's going on worse; he's putting himself out to look after me and I'm here fretting myself into a knot of nerves because I don't have the first clue how to stop him from destroying himself.

If there's one thing worse than watching someone I've admitted to caring about fall apart or losing them, it's having it happen when they've been putting their time into taking care of me.

Bloody fucking Hell. I start pacing a tight, sharp line across the room. My bloody fucking name is a title for something that's supposed to be there to support others, and once again not only am I barely able to take care of myself, but I'm too much of a twitch case to keep a level head and take care of someone I'm supposed to be responsible for. This is why I quit trying to live up to the name in the first place; every time I do, everything falls apart, and the people I care about or have taken responsibility for are the ones that get hurt. Why the Hell do I keep letting myself get roped into taking responsibility for people when I know I'm going to fuck up and it's all going to go to Hell anyway? I'm not sure I'd trust myself with a goldfish if I were really thinking straight, why do I keep trying to trust myself with causes like this one that I knew were falling apart when I first saw them, instead of trying to find someone that might actually be able to do something with them? Fucking stupid stubborn pride thinking I can handle things, shitty luck that I'm not sure there's anyone else I could trust even if I did admit what a screwup I was long enough to delegate.

That's when I realize I've been less wringing my hands and more fingering the long, continuous scar that goes across the palm side of all four fingers on my left hand, just below the fingertips, and come to a stop in my pacing.

That's a bad old pattern to fall back into. That scar and the other two that go with it, hidden under my gloves, are reminders of just where that train of thought ends up eventually, and that'd definitely not help him.

I sit on the side of my bed, and start forcing myself to breathe slowly and evenly. Both hands on the blanket, bury any temptation to fidget; block out anything else I might be picking up on, and try to find some quiet place inside to match the quiet that looms over the temple. Refuse any thought that might lead to my temper being involved in a confrontation, refuse any thought that'd fall back into my own traps; there's insects outside, a cold wind coming in, that're much better to focus on than tripping over what's going on; I put all my energy into listening to them, until I can take a couple breaths without tripping over a snatch of an image or a stray thought. Avoid distracting details, ignore all the bits and pieces that're drawing toward losing control over this or myself, just find what the core problem is.

My ward is hurting himself.

The core problem drags with it all the other images, senses, bits of what's going on, so that I have to go right back to step one and start over three or four times.

My ward his hurting himself; I have to do something about it, and that does not include panicking over what to do.

Shit.

Back to the beginning.

Somewhere before I've realized it, things blur out enough that in between fighting off the inner doubts for quiet, and focusing on what I need to deal with, the "what do I need to deal with" never quite forms. It all sort of dissolves into a fitful clump of shadows and rattling, nagging, uncertain things coalescing in the shadows of the corners of the room and taking on enough life to creep about on the edge of my awareness while electric-white prickles blur through in an almost painful crackle of light, as if the sutra were itself a living thing answering the shadows.

Then there's a knock on the door.

I start awake, the morning sun coming in the shutters. There's a pause, then another uncertain knock. "Sanzo?"

Of course, the routine we've fallen into; I slept through the breakfast bell, so he's bringing food to my room.

I shrug off the sutra and drape my outer robe over the bed next to it, mostly just to make it less obvious that I fell asleep sitting up and fully dressed, then open the door.

If I hadn't heard it last night, I wouldn't have any guess what he was doing; there's absolutely no visible sign of the self-abuse besides a small, almost imperceptible unnerved flinch when I pause to study him. "I brought you breakfast.", he offers, and holds the plate out.

The whole calm, polite, outwardly content attitude is one huge lie of omission.

I take the plate and he bows; no idea is offering itself to confront him without making a scene that'll attract the attention of half the temple, and he's not volunteering anything. He backs off and leaves, with me still standing in the doorway.

I unlock the drawer and take the bottle out for breakfast, drinking a little more than I'd intended. I'm almost tempted to chalk up the memory of the night before to some warped nightmare; it does seem like the sutra amplifies whatever dreams I have when I fall asleep wearing it, so that dozing off with it when I'm agitated is an ordeal, except that the memory is the reason why I was agitated.

I take the plate back, flattening into a doorway just outside the kitchen while the head of the temple passes by the hallway nearby; I can hear him asking Goku where I am, and Goku claiming ignorance, that he hasn't seen me since last night and I'm probably still in bed. That rules out going back to my room for a while, although I can tell from here that Goku was shading the truth pretty heavily; he knows I'm here, probably by smell. Once the high abbot stalks off muttering, I slip in and hand the plate over; Goku's waiting. He follows me silently until we're a bit out of the way of anyone else.

"So…is he sick?" He's walking beside me, looking up sharply, prodding; he doesn't really believe that it's just a cold.

"No."

"Then what is it? Is he hurting himself again, or did something happen to him?" Goku's not on one of his usual cheerful rambles, he's worried, almost angry.

"I'll deal with it."

"What the Hell! You said -" He looks both ways, then lowers his voice, ranting through his teeth, "You said you'd tell me when you knew what was going on!"

"And I will - later." I keep walking, looking straight ahead.

He grabs my wrist and stops, digging in his heels, so I can't go any further. "Damnit Sanzo, if he's hurt and he's not taking care of it, he could - this could get a lot worse! Why aren't you doing something? Why don't you want me to know what's going on?"

I take a breath, and remind myself that even if this turns into a scene, it'd be very bad to draw the attention of the rest of the temple. Then I twist my hand around to catch his wrist and pull, catching him slightly off guard so he almost stumbles; he's stronger, but I'm abusing height advantage to make it hard for him to get his footing back, holding him up. I keep my voice to a low growl, where anyone trying to listen in would have to come where I could see them to hear. "Listen, Monkey, if you go barging through this like a bull in a room of glass, you're going to make things worse - I told you I would tell you, and I will tell you, but for now I need you to just trust me and keep out of this."

We have a staredown, then he lets go of my wrist and pulls his hand back, glowering. "Why don't you trust me?"

"Right now, I have my reasons. Why don't you trust me?"

He glares back at me, then hunches his shoulders and drops his eyes.

"I'll tell you later. Let me handle this, and stay out of it."

Goku storms off toward the outside, muttering.

The rest of the day goes by in the routine we've fallen into; I spend the first part of the day out by a small fountain-garden in a back corner of the outer walls, half just sitting by it and half cleaning dead leaves out of the fountain shelves so it flows again when I get the temptation to fret again. I run into him on my way back in when the lunch bell rings; the meal passes in silence, then I take the risk of snatching one of the books from my room before retreating to another often-forgotten cranny to bury my head in foreign mythology. The language difference ensures that I have to concentrate to read, enough that I don't spend the day twitching inside.

He finds me for dinner, and that goes by in my room so I can get a drink; I mull over how to call him on what he's been doing, but before any workable ideas come together, we've finished, and he takes the plates and leaves.

I find another nook-garden near the thorned one, and settle in to wait until after most of the temple's asleep; if he's made a routine of this, I should have an opportunity.

I wait until around when I'd come out last night, and head for the thorn garden, running over what needs to be done and trying not to fall into everything that goes with it.

The first dry rattle of whatever he's lashing himself with reduces that to shambles.

The more I try not to pay attention to the inward rending of his aura, the smell of blood over the night blooming plants, or the tangled mess of my own doubts, the more all of it drowns out whatever thread of an idea I had left. I spend maybe twenty minutes pressing back into the wall, listening, with the thorns catching again while I try to find my balance and my voice again. Finally a conscious flicker squeaks through that this isn't going anywhere, and I pace back to my room again.

I fight the urge to pace again, lifting the pillow to set the gun and the sutra side by side under it. I drape my robe over the chair and settle into bed. If I'm going to brood myself to sleep, I may as well be prepared this time.

I run back through the same exercises as the night before; I manage to corner the problem somewhat easier. Catching him in the act isn't getting anywhere; I'm going to need to corner him another time, when the immediacy of it won't shred my train of thought.

I fall asleep trying to plot out and prepare for the trap.

He wakes me up with breakfast; this time the brief flicker of an unnerved flinch is just slightly more noticeable. He drops off the food and leaves.

As I eat and sneak the dishes down, I start on the how of this. It's going to have to be literally cornering him; I don't want him even having the option to leave and avoid the issue. That means indoors, somewhere. For both that and ensuring that nobody walks in, I need to be able to latch my door. I'm going to need to make sure I have however long it might take, also.

My room - I can lock the door without raising suspicions. He's there normally for meals, but taking the dishes back would be too convenient an excuse; it'll have to be between meals, when we usually scatter.

Before lunch, I actually go out looking for Goku; it doesn't take long, he's sitting in the water-tree at the koi pond below my window. When I walk up, he perks and hops out of it, the one branch springing back with a snap that'd make the groundskeeper cringe.

"So what's going on?"

"I'll explain tomorrow morning. I need you to keep away from my room for the rest of the day, and if you hear anyone thinking about disturbing me, distract them." He grimaces at the delay, then brightens at the directions and their implications.

"No problem! Any specific distractions?"

"I don't care, as long as they're not getting in my way."

The grin gets a bit more wicked; when I turn to go back inside, he runs off cackling.

When the lunch bell rings, I make sure I'm in my room waiting. True to form, my ward comes up with lunch, and stays to eat. While I'm thinking over how to set the bait, he keeps pausing and glancing over, his premeditated calm fraying at the edges; not enough to be much, just enough to be recognizable when watched and compared to his normal patterns of late.

He picks up the dishes to leave; it's now or never. "Hey."

He starts, one hand on the door, then recovers his composure fast, looking over one shoulder. "Yes?"

"You go to the library and read after dinner, don't you?" The question is purely rhetorical; he's getting predictable. He nods slowly. "Why don't you just bring your book back here before dinner and take your time?" Think friendly, think pleasant, think good-natured, stop running up the 'trap' flags. "You need to relax more." It came out about as friendly as a coiled rattlesnake rolled in sugar, but he doesn't catch it or doesn't care; some of the nerves bleed away in real relief.

"I will." He bows on his way out.

I spend the time between the end of lunch and the dinner bell either sitting at the table waiting, or pacing the length of the room, watching the door. There's nothing else to do but lie in wait, and I don't think I could concentrate on something else right now if I tried without lapsing back into fretting.

Not long after the dinner bell rings, he knocks on the door.

I almost move to open it, then stop, and just wait by the wall beside the hinge. There's a minute pause, then he tests the door handle, slips in unaware of me, and sets his book on the table. Before he turns around I reach out with one hand to push the door shut and lock it.

He starts and turns fast, realizing that I'm there. "Sanzo?" The calm smile he's been practicing is stuck half-formed, and there's a nervous jump in his voice.

"Show me your back." I keep my voice carefully flat.

"Ah…I can see you're not feeling well. I'll just let you be this evening." He's talking a bit faster than usual as he heads for the door; I sidestep in front of it. He stops in mid-step and mid-reach for the handle, ticking toward panic and intent on being elsewhere.

"Show me your back."

A moment of the fake smile disappearing further, scrabbling for a way out. "San-"

His aura freezes to match the rest of him at the revolver's cold click as I level it. "Show me your back. You're not getting out of this." The coils fall into a minor state of chaos, but he's no longer intent on escape. He turns slowly, fumbling with the ties of the robe; the scrambling twisting in his aura intensifies, and he starts shaking like he had a few days ago when I'd told him not to sleep outside. After a few minutes of fighting with the ties and shifting, the top part of the robe falls open.

His back is a criss-cross of thin red lines, newer ones barely scabbing over crossing older ones that are starting to form layers of skin; many of the older lines are swollen, sick white filling in the red with the infection draining in places where the newer lash-marks have cut across them. There almost isn't any untouched skin, just shreds where new shreds are made whenever something begins to heal. There's places where the red lines thicken, where one set of lines crossing another tore an entire patch of skin off.

"Why are you doing this?"

The trembling gets worse, as he has to draw in a few breaths to choke the scrabbling coils into submission. "Because…I deserve it." The chaos pulls in again, and he takes another breath, forcing it down on an act of will, the control in his voice failing. "I'm atoning for my sins." The calculated lie-of-omission attitude's in pieces.

"You're already atoning…you don't need to do this." The words have dropped from flat to hollow.

"Yes, I do. I deserve to suffer." I think if he had more strength to put into the words, he'd have snapped them, as he wraps his arms around himself, shaking. The roiling spiral's spiking in storms, still all directed inward, refusing to interrupt the self-destructive pattern; even if I can stop him from continuing in this, there's nothing I can do to change that.

"Not like this…this isn't necessary."

"Then what is!" He drops to his knees, curling over to cover the scar over his stomach, and the spiral sneaks a few flickers toward lashing back at me for interrupting the worthlessness and meaninglessness. "Tell me what I should do, if you have all the answers!" He's trying to hold still, shaking in the breeze from the window.

If I have all the answers. As if I even had a clue what I was doing with my own life, much less someone else's. The roil's holding in an expectant pause, barbs waiting my direction attentively like the heralds of how thoroughly this is trying to turn into another loss. "At least try to live."

He doesn't move, but the coils collapse into chaos, then recoil away from even that flicker of targeting me, back inward. "Why?" It's taking a conscious struggle for him to form words and keep what little composure he has left. "What reason do I have to live, what did you save me for?"

It had to come down to the one I've been trying to figure out myself. "I didn't -" I didn't know for sure - I cut that off as my voice drops down, mumbling through to find something I can tell him. "I couldn't leave you like that…" I drop my eyes to the floor; I know bloody well why I couldn't leave him, and it's something I haven't mentioned to anyone almost since I made it to Koumyou, not even Goku. "I made a promise…not to walk away…"

He's still shaking, breathing hard, but the roiling spiral seems to calm slightly - not on its own, there's an act of intent pulling it into order.

Then there's a knock on the door, and it's not Goku.

My gun is still in my hand as I turn to open the door, and I'm seriously tempted to use it; it's got to be one of the High Abbot's messengers trying to chase me down for his little attempt at being a petty tyrant. As the latch clicks and I can hear my ward hastily pulling the robe back up, an idea occurs to me that's the only thing saving the monk at the door.

I only open the door enough to look out, blocking it from opening any further, and start making demands before they can even open their mouths. "I need healer's salve - the stuff for some of the worse scrapes and cuts - the whole jar, and I need it now." I snap the last word with the finality of An Order.

"But-" I add the click of the gun cocking yet again and a snap of "Do it!" to the command. The monk squeaks and darts off to get what I'd asked for. I shut the door, pull a chair over, and sit right in front of it to wait. My ward is still dragging the twitching spiral into submission in the few intervening minutes until the monk returns, tapping on the door meekly. I open it just enough to snatch the salve jar and bandages from him, then shut it in his face and lock it again; I catch a moment outside the door where he's thinking about knocking again, then a flicker of a too-bright aura off down the hall, a I barely hear a "Hey, you!" in the monkey's "Official Sanzo Business" voice that makes me very thankful for Goku.

I set the jar of salve down next to him, and kneel behind him. He's shaking less, and his breathing's returned to something normal, until I pull the robe draped over his back off to take care of the injuries; he jumps and moves to get up as the spiral spikes into a full panic. I catch his shoulder with my right hand, pulling him back and holding him still, the coils already prickling into me. "Don't move.", I growl at him, and he freezes still.

The salve is a mix of painkillers, herbs to encourage wounds to heal, and a few other things for killing infections; it's strong stuff. I keep holding him still in case the panic rises again, carefully spreading it over the injuries; most of the infected areas are draining through the newer cuts, while the parts under intact skin haven't healed enough to keep it from draining out with a little pressure. Even trying to block out his aura as much as I can, the skin-to-skin contact makes it impossible; the edged tendrils creep up my arms almost physically painfully, individual threads howling clearly where I'd usually only pick them out as general blurs. There's the overwhelming panic of being cornered and exposed in this; another is threads of bloody guilt with patchy images of blood on castle-stone, blood-scent, rain droning outside, close with ignorance-guilt of not being there to protect Kanan. A newer guilt-thread recoils from me, as if somehow his existence is detrimental to me and that's reason for guilt, that one's edged with the word "failure" and tangles in with the edged-inward hollow coils, worthlessness, meaninglessness, self-loathing, a complete lack of reason to be living that drags along reasons he shouldn't be alive, stitched to a thread that clings to me as the only reason he's still in this world, giving me a kind of absolute slavish authority that more than all the rest, forces me to fight the temptation to pull my hands away and out of the spiral just to refuse it. There's disappointment that grows the longer I'm working, as if the painkillers are taking away the only other reason he had to exist, that feeds the whole tangled complex and gives it strength.

"Why are you doing this?" His voice in plaintive, lost; there's nothing of his groomed false composure left.

I force my voice to keep level, disconnected from the mess I'm Hearing. "I didn't save your life only to have you end it."

"But…" He stumbles over the word at first. "they're not life-threatening-" My hand on his shoulder manages to be the whole of my visible reaction, cutting him off in mid-sentence by latching into a claw; not life threatening until one of the infections turns to blood poisoning, or some other illness creeps in through the shredded remains of his back.

"Never. Do anything like this. Ever. Again." I fight as much of the snarl out of my voice as I can, trying to strangle the bit of anger that's crept in; I don't want to do anything else to make him think I have any hostility, not after what my words at the trial did.

"Why-" Whatever he was about to say dissolves; the word choked out as almost a sob before he forces the breaking edge of the panic/guilt/worthlessness away from falling apart entirely. I finish with the salve, and pull my hands away slowly, feeling the coils of the barbed spiral tug and pull as they let go of me; there's a bruise forming under where my thumb had been on his shoulder. I put the lid on the salve and set it on the table mechanically, then walk over to kneel in front of him. He's still curled over holding his arms over his scar, eyes closed, struggling with the twisting spiral; on his shoulder, where my hand had been, there's four angry bruises where my fingers had dug in. After all that preparing and struggling to make sure I didn't do any harm with this, I had to go and find some way to screw that up and hurt him anyway. I carefully brush a finger over the marks, trying not to get the spiral tangled around my hands again; there's indents in each of the bruises, where if my grip had been only slightly tighter, my nails would've drawn blood. He opens his eyes, and blank surprise the only thing allowed out. I have to kill my own echo of panic at meeting his eyes, stuck with where I'd managed to mess up again.

"I'm sorry.", I mumble, and look away, at the table leg beside him.

The spiral contorts suddenly, recoiling in confusion with all the various threads tangling up and breaking whatever control he had over them. He buries his face in his hands, breaking down to tears as it defies any attempt at fighting them off. "Why…why do you care so much…if I live or die?" He chokes the question out weakly.

I want to blame my inner flinch on the time spent with the spiral getting its barbs into me, to call it just a case of echoing back what bled into me, but the feeling of my own little bleeding shreds as they're drug out, confronted, and rejected is too old and familiar; I don't have an answer worth giving him. "I can't…" can't answer, can't just watch things fall to pieces like this, can't tell him that even in the forced whisper that's threatening to get away from me. "…won't lose anyone else…" More than threatening. "…not anymore." Not another grave, no more lists of names to hold accountability for, not another broken promise or case where I proved how much I can't live up to this name.

"You…need me to live…" It's less erratically forced this time, pulled out by some glimmer of a realization.

"If you die now…then I will have failed at everything important I have tried to accomplish in my life." Everything I've committed to that seriously needed it has fallen apart, gone nowhere, and often ended with whoever I tried to help dead or worse; Goku's not even much of an argument against it, since he takes care of himself already, he proved the week after I let him out of the mountain that he doesn't actually need me, he just hangs around.

The spiral shatters out into something flat and still; not a healthy calm, but something broken. His hands fall back down to his lap; he's not moving even to look up. "My entire life has been a failure. If you save a failure, is it still a success?" His voice is as dull and flat as the ruins where the spiral just was. As much as I know it's a bad sign, it drains out enough of the tension for me to start pulling my voice back to something approaching normal, and at least there's some vague option in the words that there might be an option besides "complete disaster".

"Feh. I've already gone this far…made myself responsible for what happens to you." There's a spike of one of the guilt-threads struggling out of the ruins briefly before falling back into its grave; I'd have to be in physical contact to tell which one, although my guess is the one that kept pulling away from me specifically. I take a breath, enough composure returning to bring back the careful calm. "The theory is that by giving you a new name, you are given the chance to be something else."

The ruin crumbles back into the coils that I should've known wouldn't stay dead for long, redoubling their efforts at tearing inward through the flat, broken calm. "No matter what I do or what name I bear, the weight of my failure and my sins will never leave me."

Deep breath and grind my teeth at the irony, or perhaps the cracked honesty of his whisper, the return to rejecting anything but pain and death; my own little bloody shreds may as well be right in the path of his barbed spiral. "Even so, you still have a chance. Please don't throw it away…"

Something catches in the roiling darkness, as if something back past the coils and barbs had noticed something. He looks up and the cold, hollow, bloody part capable of methodically tearing through two entire clans of youkai has put the spiral on hold to pin me down; it's like I just walked into the path of a cobra. "What about you?" It's almost not even a lash back, so much as a calculated observation, a statement of having caught on to my own doubts and old wounds.

I'm still scrambling to find a train of thought in the shock and remembering to breathe when the rest of him catches up to the foreground, with a renewed effort from the guilt-related-to-me. "Sanzo…" he flinches his gaze away from me.

"As long as I'm still alive, you have to live, too." The statement drags out of that disoriented place where I'm still wondering how much, exactly, he's figured out about me.

Somehow, that gives the spiral back the strength to redouble its tearing inward, and he falls apart again, eyes downcast, tears running down his face in pre-emptive guilt for things that haven't happened yet.

"Promise me."

He wavers, then something in the spiral admits defeat. "I promise."


End file.
